Water · Conversation · Communication
“Long line today,” says the stranger behind you. It starts with the weather. Then, without planning it, one of you says something true about your life, and the conversation turns. Ten minutes later you know more about this person than about some people you have known for years. Who could you start a conversation like that with today?
Jesus is resting at Jacob’s well when he asks a Samaritan woman for a drink. “Jesus answered her, ‘If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says 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 with, and the well is deep. So where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his children and his livestock?’” (John 4:10-12 WEB). John calls the place a spring, pēgē (John 4:6). She calls it phrear, a dug well.
Jesus moves the water from the well into the person, where it becomes a spring. “Jesus answered her, ‘Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never thirst again; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.’ The woman said to him, ‘Sir, give me this water, so that I don’t get thirsty, neither come all the way here to draw.’” (John 4:13-15 WEB). “Springing up” is hallomenou, to leap.
Spiritual Move: Contemplative Prayer. Pour a glass of water. Before you drink, pray her words once, slowly: “Sir, give me this water.” Then sit quietly with the glass for ten minutes, asking for nothing more.
Photo by Muneer ahmed ok on Unsplash