Have you ever been thirsty? Like, really, really thirsty, where your mouth is sticking together for lack of hydration? If you’ve had surgery, you might remember that the first sensation upon coming out of anesthesia is thirst. Nurses are talking to you and giving you all kinds of instructions, and all you can think is “Where is my Coke, Woman??”

Our souls thirst in the same way. God created us with a “lack-mechanism” where we experience a pervasive feeling of lacking for something. C.S. Lewis said that God created us with a hole in our hearts that only God can fill. God wants us to feel a need for him. This lack-mechanism prompts us to go out and find what we need to quench our soul-thirst.

Too often we try to quench it with worldly soda. The first bottle of empty sugar and fizz that we find is consumed in great quantities. Sometimes soda comes in the form of alcohol or drugs. Sometimes it comes dressed in heels or the well-cut suit of someone we aren’t married to. Maybe it comes in the form of “retail therapy.” Often it comes through your screen as you greedily binge a full weekend away in a sugar coma of Netflix distraction. But it’s like your grandmother told you … soda is not good for you. It is too easy to get addicted to sugary fizz, and before you know it, months or years have passed since you had a good drink of real living water.

John 4 (Common English Bible)

⁷ A Samaritan woman came to the well to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me some water to drink.” ⁸ His disciples had gone into the city to buy him some food.

⁹ The Samaritan woman asked, “Why do you, a Jewish man, ask for something to drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” (Jews and Samaritans didn’t associate with each other.)

¹⁰ Jesus responded, “If you recognized God’s gift and who is saying to you, ‘Give me some water to drink,’ you would be asking him and he would give you living water.”

¹¹ The woman said to him, “Sir, you don’t have a bucket and the well is deep. Where would you get this living water? ¹² You aren’t greater than our father Jacob, are you? He gave this well to us, and he drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.”

¹³ Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, ¹⁴ but whoever drinks from the water that I will give will never be thirsty again. The water that I give will become in those who drink it a spring of water that bubbles up into eternal life.”

¹⁵ The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will never be thirsty and will never need to come here to draw water!”

Notice that Jesus stopped his journey in a Samaritan village, a place where Jews such as himself were not welcome. He was in the middle of going somewhere else when this beautiful exchange happened. It was noon. The village ladies all drew their water together in the early morning so that they could visit and gossip in the cool hours. This lady came alone at noon, indicating that she lived a life of too much soda. Jesus asked her to draw water for him with her bucket, which was unclean for a Jew. He broke a lot of rules to interact with her that day. 

The water that Jesus offered this woman, and offers us as well, is the gushing artesian spring of endless life. It is the forgiveness, hope, reconciliation, and peace that comes from finally finding that thing that satisfies our lack-mechanism, and we are satiated for once and for all.

The water Jesus offers is effervescent. It bubbles. It jumps from the glass and tickles your nose. It is so filled with joy that you can’t stop drinking it until you are full enough to never want soda again.

So drink. Drink again and again. Drink in Jesus until your thirst is quenched. His well is deep, so fill up your bucket and live.

Well of Life by Kathy Schumacher