Recently I was reading through Jeremiah 2. God calls the people of Judah to repent through his prophet Jeremiah. In verses 12 and 13, the LORD through Jeremiah accuses the people of Judah of two evils. They forsook the LORD fountain of living waters as well as made cisterns for themselves which held no water. The people were not going to the LORD to ‘quench their thirst’ but were going elsewhere in order to provide for their thirst. In some sense, this is the problem that we all fundamentally have. We are trying to find our satisfaction in anything and everything but God. The LORD has provided himself as living waters but instead we go off on our own seeking our own sources of satisfaction.
When Jesus walked this earth, He found himself in Samaria besides a well. John chapter 4 recounts the story of him encountering the woman by the well. Being midday, the woman was probably a reject of her society. We find out later in fact that she was probably shunned because she had had five husbands. So the woman was at the well in order to quench her thirst with water but Jesus in His love offered her something even greater. A water that would last and spring up to eternal life. One that would quench her deepest desires.
The question that we all need to ask ourselves is, where will we find satisfaction for our thirsts? In the past we may have used relationships, money, control, status, comfort, security in order to ‘pacify’ our souls but the truth of the matter is none of these things will ever satisfy. I think that C.S. Lewis puts it wonderfully in the Weight of Glory where he writes,
“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
Our LORD Jesus Christ is our living water. He offers himself freely. Will we find our satisfaction in Him and him alone?