“Jesus answered and said to 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.’” (John 4:10)
Not only did she not know what was needed to take away the anguish in her soul: Like so many women and men in our time, she assumed that life was nothing other than a constant search for a fulfillment that never comes and a satisfaction unattainable for all persons. Jesus has such a well of empathy for her: “If you knew the gift of God,” He says to her—but she cannot imagine there might be such a gift, at least not for her. She rules herself out as undeserving. Married five times and now living with a sixth man, life looked hopeless. The villagers may be right after all; she was worthless; but only in her own eyes. To Christ she was precious. The woman at Jacob’s well drawn into conversation by Jesus was deeply troubled, but she was looking to so many men for consolation that she became a threat to all the women of the village; yet when she met the Son of Man, the only source of solace, she nearly missed the moment. She’s the epitome of so many people in the world today.
Our economy takes advantage of the restless quest for fulfillment from possessions. Advertisements encourage us to purchase another new automobile, move to another home, join a health and fitness club, change our life style; and none of it quenches the thirst that will not abate. Many are wealthy enough to buy into the promises that keep them running in circles like the mechanical rabbits that greyhounds chase in Florida. Name the “rabbit”—vacations, entertainment, sports, recreation, even sex—all in time become routine and boring. One wonders what next to do in order to fill up the emptiness in the soul. The fortunate come to realize that something is missing; the less perceptive die without ever learning the spiritual ingredients that their Creator placed deep within every human being. The woman at the well nearly missed her opportunity to go deeper into her soul, because for a time she and the Lord were speaking on different levels of comprehension.
Psalm 42 reads: “As the deer pants for the water brooks, so pants my soul for You, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.” How blessed are they who empathize with that yearning. Here is the impetus for all evangelization, because the heart of all human beings contains this blessed thirst. Everything that comprises who we are and how we express our faith has this purpose in mind—to raise the consciousness of everybody we meet with the awareness of the thirst for that living water. Our worship, teachings, ritual, architecture, music, icons, preaching—all have the goal of salvation. Among our challenges is the opulence of our present society. So many religions; but not all of them leading to the Kingdom of God. It is not our purpose to judge, only to expose to the Light what is true, sacred and redemptive.
I’m not sure if the vast wealth of so many Americans is helpful to our salvation or not. On the one hand it offers substitute satisfactions, ersatz pleasures that are taken for bliss, yet those who work through the pleasures of the flesh and end up depressed, bored and often suicidal become like the woman at the well—candidates for discovering what only Christ offers to enhance their lives. One reason the poor are blessed is because they have no hope of satisfying their soul’s thirst in this world.
What He gives never grows stale, tasteless or flat. The blessed discover that by prayer, meditation, fasting from all the so-called good things of this life, they imbibe even here and now the water of eternal life, as realized in the prelude of eternal life:
“And he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding from the throne of God and of the Lamb” (Revelation 22:1).