Jesus answered, “If you knew the generosity of God and who I am, you would be asking me for a drink, and I would give you fresh, living water.”

11-12 The woman said, “Sir, you don’t even have a bucket to draw with, and this well is deep. So how are you going to get this ‘living water’? Are you a better man than our ancestor Jacob, who dug this well and drank from it, he and his sons and livestock, and passed it down to us?”

13-14 Jesus said, “Everyone who drinks this water will get thirsty again and again. Anyone who drinks the water I give will never thirst—not ever. The water I give will be an artesian spring within, gushing fountains of endless life.” (The Message)

This was the Samaritan woman’s story, and Jesus knew it. She kept drinking ‘water’ that did not, could not, satisfy her thirst. ‘But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for’ could have been written over her life up to this moment. If only she had known who Jesus was, and what He had to offer, her life would have been so different. It was about to be. Watch this space!

There is a profound irony in the question (12): ”Are you greater than our father Jacob…?” We know the answer to be a resounding, ‘Yes’.

Back in 2012, Jilly and I spent a long week-end in Barcelona. On a Sunday morning, we decided to leave our hotel very early, when the air was cooler, and walk to the beach. As we walked through the city centre, probably around 5 a.m., we saw crowds of people, mainly young people, moving out of it. After a night in the clubs and bars, and so on, many looked rough, and some were clearly unwell. Yet we knew, and commented on this, that come the next week-end, probably most of them would be back for more of the same – drinking unsatisying water from a temporal well. This is the human condition: desperately searching for meaning and satisfaction. We are empty inside, and we have to find a way to fill the vacuum. But nothing and no-one can help us, outside of Jesus. St. Augustine, in one of his ‘Confessions’, famously said, ‘…Thou hast formed us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee.’ Later, in the same confession, he went on to pray: ‘Who will send Thee into my heart to inebriate it, so that I may forget my woes, and embrace Thee my only good?’

PRAYER: Lord, give me a heart to see the crowds as lost sheep without a Shepherd. May I never forget that I was once among them – desperately looking for something I could not find. May I never forget that you came and found me, and brought me home, just like you did with the woman at the well. So I pray for ‘labourers’, and offer myself to serve in your harvest field.