dar334

Those who have lived in rural areas have all had their own experience with well water.  In my rural area, our well water left something to be desired.  My dad always called our source of water a “salt vein”.  And salt it had, along with rust, and minerals.  Having lived there since I was three years old it was just “water” to me.  Other peoples water, if I traveled further than my own neighborhood, tasted a whole lot different.

Just below the ground, if it is permeable enough to hold water, (allowing liquids or gasses to pass through it), we will find a saturation zone.  The upper surface is called the water table and the zone beneath the water table is called an aquafier, a huge storehouse of water.  Long story short, when we have a well dug and water is found, we have our water source.  A pump is put in and a line is run to our house so when we turn on our faucet, water comes out.  This ponder was generated this morning as I was listening to  Allistair Begg because his sermon revolved around a woman at a well.

In the Book of John, he tells us in chapter four that Jesus had left Jerusalem after the Passover and was traveling through Judea to return to Galilee.  While going through  Samaria, which most Jews avoided, he stopped at Jacob’s well near Sychar to rest.  It was about noon and his disciples had gone in to town for food.  There was a Samaritan woman there drawing water from the well and he asked her for a drink.  She replied “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman.  How can you ask me for a drink?”  This response doesn’t seem valid, why would she think, because she was a Samaritan, that Jesus wouldn’t ask her for a drink?  The answer is easy.  In Old Testement times, the Lord had given this parcel of land to Joseph’s sons Manasseh and Ephraim, but after several warnings about disobedience, the Israelites continually disobeyed God so he allowed the king of Assyria to take the Israelites into captivity, the king then sent foreigners to live there.  The foreigners intermarried with the Israelites that were left there and started living as the foreigners did, worshiping their gods and not The God.  The Jews then considered them Samaritans, “half-breeds”, and dispised them.

Jesus however, with love, ministered to the “outcasts”, the “half-breeds” and showed them the way to the “living water”.  Although this woman knew about Jacob and the coming Messiah,  she was living with a man she was not married to, and previously had five husbands.   He told her that whoever drinks the water from the well will get thirsty again.  But whoever drinks the water Jesus gives will never thirst.  Jesus stayed in town for a couple days and taught the Samaritans about the living water, and because of his words many more became believers.

Just like the differences in well water, people have differences too.    No matter what our differences are, if we drink the water Jesus gives us, we will never thirst again.  Jesus welcomed the sinners with open arms, he welcomed those different from him, he didn’t judge them, but he did draw their attention to their sin and then taught them the way of God.  God even made sure there was an Instruction Book available to us.  But we assemble our lives the way we want instead of reading and following the directions, and I am as guilty as the next.

If only we would follow directions.  Think about how wonderful the world would be.  Perhaps there would be no incureable illnesses, no crime, no pain.  Perhaps there would be no drug abuse, no poverty, no fear.  Children would be raised by parents that loved them enough to stay married, to be accountable for their care.  Instead, we disobey and our children follow in our footsteps.  We give Satan the means to do his evil work.  All you have to do is turn on the news, Satan is everywhere.

I heard a story recently that I’m probably going to totally screw up, but here’s the just of it.  There was a man who had a son and when daddy would get home from a hard day at work he would walk to the neighborhood bar to drink away his troubles.   One day as he was walking through the new fallen snow he turned around and looked behind him.  His little boy was following him, stretching his little legs out as far as he could, putting his little feet in the footprints his daddy was making.  He realized at that moment that he his son was following him to the bar.  He stopped and turned around.  The next night he made sure the footsteps his son would follow would take him to the neighborhood church instead.

Nuff said.

-dar