“Will You Give Me A Drink?”

When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)

The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.)

Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

“Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?”

Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

John 4:7-14

In the Bible, water is often used as a symbol of Jesus as the Living Water who satisfies our deepest needs. So it fits that one of Jesus’ most memorable conversations took place with a woman, at a well. It began with Jesus asking the Samaritan woman for a drink of water. It quickly progressed to a discussion of something more when Jesus told her that whoever drank of the water, would thirst again. But Jesus went on to say that “whoever drinks of the water I shall give him will never thirst.”

As a result of this conversation, the woman and many people in the village where she lived came to believe that Jesus was the Christ, the Savior of the world.

We cannot live without water. Nor can we truly live now or eternally without the living water we receive from knowing Jesus Christ as our Savior. We can drink of His life-giving water today.

Only Jesus, the Living Water, can satisfy the thirsty soul.

Our Daily Bread – September 30, 2013