“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 4:13-14 (NIV).
Plucking the gold paper notice from my door knob, I expected to see an advertisement. Instead, it was a notice from the city. To complete some necessary work on our water lines, the city would be shutting off our water for approximately seven hours the following Monday.
Seven hours seemed like a week. I was frustrated at the thought of the inconvenience. So were my neighbors. We prepared, using containers to hold drinking water and filling up our bathtubs, just in case the work lasted longer than expected.
Monday morning dawned. Stumbling into the bathroom to wash my face, I turned on the tap. Nothing happened. I’d forgotten we wouldn’t have water for most of the day.
Although it was an inconvenience, I was convicted by my attitude when I read a newspaper article that morning about the drought in Cape Town, South Africa. The intense drought in Cape Town began in 2015, bringing the community closer and closer to what is called “Day Zero,” which is the point when the water in the reservoirs will no longer provide safe drinking water. The date for the turn off of all water taps to about 3.2 million people in this community is around April 12.
We take for granted the conveniences in our country. Flip a switch and the lights come on. Turn on the tap and water flows. Hook up a water hose and a sprinkler and the results are a green lawn.
As Christians, there is something else we sometimes take for granted. We can become comfortable in our pews, forgetting the sacrifice of our Savior. We forget our initial drink of The Living Water. We’ve been the seeker, like the Samaritan woman at the well.
When Jesus asked her for a drink of water, she questioned why a Jew would ask a Samaritan for a drink, for the two didn’t associate.
Jesus replies, “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.”
Complacency and worldly distractions have sidetracked us from our mission—to tell others about Jesus. We might have been bold when we first experienced His amazing grace. Then, a drought hit. We quit feeding on the Word, our church attendance became sporadic and our prayers dried up, except for an emergency.
Minister A.B. Simpson said, “Christ is not a reservoir but a spring. His life is continual, active and ever passing on with an outflow as necessary as its inflow. If we do not perpetually draw the fresh supply from the living Fountain, we shall either grow stagnant or empty; it is, therefore, not so much a perpetual fullness as a perpetual filling.”
Our faith needs continual watering. Only Jesus Christ will ever satisfy our thirsty souls.