“Whoever Drinks The Water I Give Them Will Never Thirst”

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.”

The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”

John 4: 7-15

Seventy percent of the world is covered by water, but only one percent of it is drinkable by humans.

Jesus went out of His way to introduce a lost woman to another kind of life giving water. He deliberately chose to go to a town in Samaria, a place where no respectable rabbi would set foot.

The living water is Jesus Himself. Those who receive Him have eternal life. But the living water He provides also serves another function. Jesus said of those who receive it: “Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.” The living water that refreshes us is to refresh others also.

As fresh-water distribution is uneven in the world, so to is the distribution of living water. Many people do not know followers of Jesus who really care about them. It is our privilege to share Him. Christ is, after all, the living water for whom people are thirsting.

Jesus is a never-ending supply of living water for a parched world.

Our Daily Bread – July 21, 2014