“Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
~John 4:14~

Today in church the pastor preached on John 4. He said he preached it last year during a midweek Lenten service where there weren’t that many people. But the response he had was positive to the point where someone even asked him to come and preach the sermon inside their house. In that particular moment I was calculating on my phone how much money I would make with a certain number of hours a week, so I do not remember for sure whether he went to the house and did it.

I learned something right away that I had never heard before, and that was that living water is a Hebrew idiom for running water, which he said is also an idiom. But basically living water is water that moves and flows such as as stream or a river. This kind of water was generally considered better than stagnant water with no life. I always just thought Jesus was speaking purely poetically, and that the woman understood that but was going along with it trying to figure out what he meant.

As nice as the story of the woman at the well is, it’s not really a story that ever felt like it was for me. Don’t get me wrong, I was happy it was in there. There needed to be a story where Jesus accepts promiscuous women and doesn’t turn them away from his presence and Kingdom, especially when women like this woman were typically shunned which is why she went at noon. But it didn’t have much to say to me, a woman with one husband who has been with the same man for over 26 years.

Well somewhere in here the pastor started to define the word thirst using modern day slang terms. People who post certain kinds of pictures on social media are thirsty for attention and posting thirst traps. When I did my supervisor video review at the end last semester, between my two choices, I specifically went with the video that would not be too thirst trappy. One of them I probably could’ve done that with, but instead I chose the one with the fatter arms and bad angle. So be it. I survived.

He said this woman was thirsty for something and she kept trying to get it filled from men. Well that wasn’t me either, except, I had just been dealing with how I tend to be thirsty for one thing which I’ve tried to get from one particular man. The man I am married to. That’s how the Bible describes it. You’re supposed to drink from your own cistern and get water from your own well and nobody else’s. But this isn’t really a particularly sexual need. The thing I was asking for was very specific.

I’m getting lost. But now I am paying closer attention because this sermon has something for me. And I’m wondering again if this is really it, if the answer really is getting my need met by Jesus and having him quench my thirst to where I never thirst again. The pastor is insisting Jesus can do this, that he’s the only one who can make us happy. He says he doesn’t need to demand that his wife desire him and find him attractive or fill his need to be desirable. He can be free to serve his wife.

There were other examples too, like work and those things. I started picturing the flowing, vibrant river, and I believed again that Jesus really can save me and give me new, abundant life. And if I were to thirst again, then praise the Lord for the gift that nails me and gives me a reason to be close and find comfort in Jesus. “Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town…” After Jesus, the water jar was irrelevant to her. I wonder what ever happened to it, if it broke and cracked apart.