“The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.)  Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, “Give me a drink,” you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.?  The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water?  Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.” Â
Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again,  but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”  The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.” (John 4:9-15)
Sitting at a real well with real water present, Jesus engages the woman at the well in a conversation concerning “spiritual water.” He calls what He has to offer a “gift of God” and describes its effect as the ultimate thirst quencher–an unending spring of life. These verses came to mind yesterday as I sat in church and heard the Pastor, Harriss Ricks, describe the work of Christ’s Spirit in a similar way.
His vivid illustration began by having us consider ourselves when we were apart from Christ as being like a pond. A pond is self-enclosed–individualistic. A pond is still, quiet and doesn’t really impact it’s surroundings much. In fact, the nature of the pond is that it responds to the changes in the environment around it. If it is dry and the sun shines too long and hard, the water level in the pond recedes and algae begins to grow. The pond is left with stagnant, murky water.  The woman at the well had lived like a pond for years. She was influenced by her environment–and the day she met Jesus — He knew she was stagnant and murky–He knew she was thirsty for something refreshing and reviving. He offered her the deepest refreshment–Himself.
Rather than face life like a stagnant pond, Jesus casts a vision of a life that is more like a living stream. A life that would indeed quench her deepest thirst. A stream is constantly replenished with water–it receives and releases fresh water every moment so that it becomes a vivid demonstration of what it means to be alive.  Something that is moving, cascading, reviving, impacting everything that it touches.
Thinking about this word picture and the story in John, I remembered that this woman did indeed receive the Living Water and the first thing she did was to run to the people of her town to release the life giving water that she had received– the news that there was an ultimate thirst quencher–His name is Jesus.