Parched

Water is a funny thing. It’s the primary ingredient in our physical makeup. We need it on a daily basis to stay alive. Yet it can just as easily bring destruction, illness and death (e.g., hurricanes, floods, contamination).

A few years ago I was hiking in the Georgia mountains when I got caught in a thunderstorm. As I huddled under a rhododendron bush, I had absolutely no need for water. Yet there it was, coming down in buckets and soaking me from head to toe. Fortunately I didn’t melt (or get hit by lightning, which had been my greater concern).

On another hiking trip, I found myself without water on a hot July day. I had taken a wrong turn, wandered for several miles, and drained my drinking supply. When I finally came upon a stream cascading down a hillside, it was the most welcome sight I had ever laid eyes – and mouth – on.

Away from the woods, in the tamer confines of suburban life, bottled water is a big seller. Spring water, vitamin-enhanced water, distilled water – it’s all there on our grocery store shelves. There’s even a product called “Lifewater.”

But consumer marketing has nothing on Jesus, the one who described Himself as “living water” (John 4:10). He’s the only one who can satisfy man’s greater thirst, the kind described in Psalm 42: “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God” (vv. 1-2).

Jesus promised that He is faithful to satisfy that thirst. As He told the Samaritan woman who had come to draw water from a well, “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” (John 4:13-14).

That promise is good for life here on earth and in the one that follows: “To him who is thirsty I will give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of life,” (Revelation 21:6).

The water Jesus offers doesn’t need purifying. It can’t be bottled. And it’s free to anyone who will accept it.