Water and living water are both essential

As you drive past the town of Riverside on Highway 218 you might have noticed that there is a water tower and a church steeple close to each other that dominate the horizon. What comes to mind for me is the images of water and living water side by side.

We all need water for life. We can go without food for one to two months. But most people can only go without water for three to seven days.

Water is essential for various bodily functions and overall health. It helps prevent dehydration and maintains body temperature. Water helps our digestion and the absorption of vitamins and minerals. It is necessary for our brains to function.

So we can’t live without water. Even more so, we need living water!

In John chapter 4 we have the account of Jesus meeting a Samaritan woman at a well outside the city of Sychar. This woman is coming in the heat of the day to get water because she has been shunned by the other women in that city, and not able to come to the well with the others when it is cooler.

Jesus asks this woman for a drink of water. At first she hesitates, knowing that Jews and Samaritans of that day did not share things in common. “Jesus answered her, ‘If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.’ The woman said to him, ‘Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.’” (John 4:10-14)

Water and living water. Both are essential for our lives. The book of Revelation reminds us that the living water will last for eternity.

“They shall hunger no more, neither thirst anymore; the sun shall not strike them, nor any scorching heat. For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of living water, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.” (Revelation 7:16-17)