When we were conducting a medical mission in a small village deep in the Mekong Delta, the village chief asked if we had any medicine that might help his ailing mother. He led us through the jungle to a hut built of grass and bamboo, and there he motioned us toward an old lady lying on a raised pallet of crude boards. Beside the bed was a brightly painted wooden coffin, since death appeared imminent After a brief examination, however, our team physician diagnosed the primary problem as extreme dehydration. He set up an IV, showed the chief how to replace the bottles of saline solution, and promised to return in three days. When we pulled up to the riverbank again in our boats later that week, the village chief’s mother stood happily waving by the water’s edge. 

We know that our physical bodies will quickly die without adequate water. Just as true, our spiritual bodies also require a constant flow of another kind of water to survive. The Samaritan woman was spiritually dying and desperately in need of a “well of water springing up into everlasting life” (John 4:14). If she had only known who Jesus was, she would have asked of Him, and He would have given her living water. 

We know who Jesus is, but do we daily seek through His Word to be filled, strengthened, and refreshed by that living water of life? Or do we instead try to quench our thirst with the pleasures and treasures of this world? The invitation to come is new every day. Jesus has promised, “I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely” (Revelation 21:6). How thirsty are we? 

He that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst. John 6:35  

~ Pete Lewis