While on my mission trip to the Navajo Reservation we stayed at a Nazarene Church there. Several trees grew in the yard surrounding it. There was an elaborate irrigation system to keep them watered. One of the hoses that delivered water to the some of the trees sprang a leak and it wasn't supplying water to the trees. Pastor Bill who was our host while there remarked that it had to be fixed soon because he said that "without water all things die." Truer words have not been spoken, without water plants cannot grow, animals would die, life cannot survive.
The need for water has been truly evident this past year. Lingering drought in Oklahoma and Texas has taken its toll on farms and ranches of all types. Crops have failed, non-irrigated crops have been damaged or even completely destroyed. Grassland has withered, ranchers have had to choose between feeding their cows increasingly expensive hay or selling them. Ponds have dried up, leaving little water for thirsty cows. The land is parched and bare.
Recent rains have helped restore the land but so little rain has fallen over past year that even the several inches that fell have not completely erased the damage. Some areas have developed 15 inches or more of moisture deficit. It may take a year or more of more normal rainfall patterns to completely soak the subsoil and fill the ponds. The effects of drought linger long after the it is over.
John 4:13,14 "Jesus answered, 'Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.'"
When Jesus said these words to a woman at a well the imagery would have been obvious to her. Much of the area in which they lived was desert. Water was precious. To have it, the people of the time would have had to go through the tedious process of hauling water up a bucket at a time from deeply dug wells. Drought and thirst were something that this woman would have experienced first hand. To her the thought of not having to draw more water would have been very intriguing.
Of course the water that Jesus was talking about was not physical water but spiritual. The point that he was making was that without "living water" all things die. Just as a farmer's crop withers without water so our lives wither without the water that Jesus gives. The water that he offering is capable of meeting a far greater thirst than that of physical water. The importance of drinking from the well cannot be overstated. "Without water all things die."
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