Come thirsty

"Come all you who are thirsty,
come, come to the waters."
Isaiah 55:1

In the book of John there is a story about a woman who had been sinful. I assume that she also had been very hurt. She'd been married several times, and divorced several times and was living with a man who was not her husband.

Usually, when you hear about this woman, she is used as an example of a great sinner. We can have a sort of "that would never happen to me" attitude, "all those marriages, all those men." But this was a society where men were permitted to divorce their wives if they were displeased with them in any way. Perhaps her heart had been broken just as many times as it had hoped for love and commitment. Perhaps it was jaded after so many years of disappointment and sin. Perhaps she was a great sinner who brought all of it on herself. I don't know. But I know not to pass judgment. How forgetful I can be that I am a great sinner. She was no different than myself.

It made no difference to Jesus. He came to her one day at a well and asked her for a drink. His reason? To help her recognize her own thirst. Then He told her that she could have asked Him for living water. Perplexed, she said this- one of my favorite Bible quotes, "Sir, you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water?"

The well is deep. She was talking about a hole in the ground, Jesus was directing her toward the depth of need and hurt in her heart- they were both right. The well is so, so deep.

But we cannot know Him in His fullness and deny that He has called us to come drink when we are thirsty. He doesn't deny that the well of our heart is deep; He promises to be able to fill the depths with Himself.

Lord Jesus, today, I am so thirsty. Fill my cup, Lord.

The Lord is the One who fills our cup to overflowing. He meets the depth of our soul with something alive, something that I cannot even comprehend. It manifests itself in peace and love and joy and gentleness.

But people and circumstances, they can cause the cup to spill. Out of their anger or hurt or cruelty, they knock into us- the joy, the peace spilling out. Our cup is empty. Our hearts are filled with grief. This has happened to me in the past few days. Harsh words slammed into me like a freight train, and my cup was empty all of a sudden.

But the response is this- turn to the Well, to the Fount of Living Water- ask Him to fill my cup again. Fill it, Lord, to overflowing.

It's not ever a person's job to fill another person's cup. We are just conduits of His living water for one another, so though it may appear that someone else fills our cup with gladness from time to time, it's really just that the person has opened themselves up to become faucet for His grace. The water's source is Him alone. I say this because it matters when the cup is suddenly empty. Anger and hurt will come, but the person who caused the emptiness cannot fill the cup back up. It is my own responsibility to go to Him when I am so thirsty and ask to be filled again.

May our cups be filled to overflowing from the Fount of Blessing Himself. Grace and peace to all who read this.