Christian Living

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Last summer, my husband and I began a home improvement project in the master bathroom of our home. We planned to replace the existing carpet with ceramic tile. My brother-in-law, who had recently finished tiling his two bathrooms, kitchen, entry way and dining room, assured us that we would have this “small” project finished in no time at all. We bought a guide book on the subject, and talked with several other friends who had experience with installing tile. We felt prepared to begin the task.

In June, we began by tearing up the carpet. As the sub-floor was getting the final touches, we were putting up the Christmas tree. Perhaps we will ring in the New Year with grouting.

Needless to say, due to the semi-permanent construction zone in this bathroom, all six family members were using the other bathroom of our house. This wouldn’t have been such a terrible inconvenience, except that the thermostat of the bathtub had a permanent temperature setting; lukewarm. Not wanting to freeze the innocent little children in our home, I spent weeks retrieving pots full of hot water from the kitchen sink and pouring them into the bathtub. I must admit that, during the cold water crisis, I allowed myself to have more than one pity party. In the twenty-first century, who should have to endure such a ridiculous inconvenience? After much complaining to the bathroom project manager, a.k.a. my husband, the bath fixture was disassembled and hot water came forth!

It’s interesting that something which one person views as an inconvenience to their life, such as cold water in the bathtub, another may see as an improvement. My self-pity was turned to remorse when I heard the testimonies of twelve men and women of our church who had recently returned from a short term mission trip to South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. It was shared with our congregation that it is not uncommon for villagers to walk two miles one-way to obtain water from the local well. These residents are actually fortunate, because many communities are forced to rely on stagnant pools of water due to the lack of financial resources to drill and maintain a well.

Our supply of water shapes our daily routines. Be it the lack of hot water, or the water itself, we spend our time obtaining it because it is a necessary part of our lives. But even more than this, the Bible says that the supply of living water from our Lord Jesus shapes who we are.

It was the evening, and Jesus was tired from his journey. He sat down by a well, and a Samaritan woman came to draw water. Jesus asked the woman to give him a drink.

John 4:9-15 (NIV) says, “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 flocks and herds?’

Jesus answered, ‘Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I 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 won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.’

The Samaritan woman was thirsty, but no matter how much water she could drink at the well that day, the next day would find her thirsty again. Likewise, Jesus saw in her the spiritual thirst that had never been quenched.

Perhaps she had tried to quench this thirst with relationships. Jesus asked her to call her husband, but she replied that she had none. Jesus acknowledged that this was quite true, because she had had five husbands, and the man with whom she was living was not her husband.

As the Samaritan woman tried to fill the spiritual void in her life, we fill our time with things that we think will bring us happiness. We return regularly to the T.V., movies, internet, magazines, vacations, the doctor, chocolate, the mall, the beauty salon, the lottery, or the dating scene. We work longer hours and imagine what life could be like if we had less stress and more money.

Matthew 5:6 (NIV) states, “Blessed are those that hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” What does it mean to hunger and thirst for righteousness? Perhaps it means that, just as the Samaritan woman was driven by her thirst to pick up the water jar and walk the distance to the well, we are driven to pick up our Bible and read about God’s will for our lives. Perhaps it means praying every day that we will live the way that Jesus would live. Perhaps it means loving God more than we love the T.V., the movies, the internet, or making more money.

If the well at my house went dry, (or even if our hot water heater stopped working!) we would certainly do something to remedy the situation. It wouldn’t be many days before we would run out of clean clothes, clean dishes, or we couldn’t stand the smell of ourselves. We would last even fewer days without water to drink. We would seek out water, because that’s what we need to survive.

Jesus is what we need to survive. He is the living water that fills us when everything else leaves us parched and thirsty for more. Only with the living water of the cleansing forgiveness of Jesus Christ is there eternal life, and only by daily drinking of this water are we refreshed and energized to live life to its fullest. May those who have never tasted this water seek it out, and may those who have tasted of it drink from it daily, because none of us need to go thirsty.

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