The Wellspring

A woman came to a well in the heat of the day, alone, to draw water as she had drawn it a thousand times, the daily labor of the bucket and the rope and the deep cistern, and she found a stranger sitting there who spoke to her of another kind of water. Jacob’s well was deep, and the drawing was hard, and whatever she carried home would be gone by evening and the thirst would return, as it always did. And the Lord said to her, whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again, but the water that I shall give shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life. He offered her not a fuller bucket but an inner spring.

See the two kinds of water and the two kinds of thirst. The world’s water is outside us. It must be found, and drawn, and carried, at the cost of daily labor, and it never lasts. Whosoever drinketh of it shall thirst again. This is the whole story of the soul that seeks its satisfaction in the things of this world, forever hauling water from wells that leave it dry, forever thirsting again. But the water Christ gives is different in kind. It does not stay outside to be fetched. It becomes a well within, a spring, rising of itself, and the one who has it shall never thirst in the old, aching, unsatisfied way again.

THE BROKEN CISTERNS

The prophet Jeremiah put our whole folly into one sentence. My people have committed two evils, God says through him. They have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water. There are the two evils together, the forsaking of the fountain and the hewing of the cistern. We turn from the living spring that would flow in us forever, and we labor instead to cut our own cisterns out of the rock, our own reservoirs of satisfaction, and they crack, and the water runs out, and we are left standing over a dry and broken thing we wore ourselves out to make.

And still we go back to the dry wells. The woman at Jacob’s well had drawn from many, had gone from man to man seeking what none of them could give, and thirsted still, and would have gone on thirsting had the Lord not met her there. We are no different. We hew out cistern after cistern, pleasure and possession and reputation and human love, and each holds its water for a while and then cracks and drains, and we stand thirsty over the ruin of it and go and hew another. The thirst is not the problem. The thirst is right; we were made to thirst for God. The problem is the broken cisterns we keep digging instead of coming to the fountain.

THE SPRING WITHIN

What, then, is this inner well that Christ gives, that never runs dry? He told us plainly on another day, standing in the temple and crying out that if any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink, and that out of the belly of the one who believed should flow rivers of living water. And the Scripture adds the explanation, that this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive. The inner well is the Holy Spirit, God himself given to dwell within, an unfailing spring fed not from our own shallow store but from the infinite depths of God. This is why it never fails. A reservoir we must keep filling will always run low. A spring fed from God does not.

And note the motion of it, that the water is springing up, into everlasting life. It is not a still and stagnant pool but a living, rising, upward thing, moving always toward its source and its end, toward everlasting life, toward God. The life of the Spirit within is not a dead reserve but a living current, lifting the soul godward. And it rises to overflowing, so that the well within becomes rivers flowing out, for the water was never given to be hoarded. Received from God, it flows through us to others, and the soul that drinks of Christ becomes in its turn a channel of his water to a thirsty world. Like a spring of water, the prophet says, whose waters fail not.

COME AND DRINK

So the whole invitation comes down to a coming and a drinking. Ho, every one that thirsteth, the old prophet cried, come ye to the waters. The Lord cried the same in the temple, and cries it still, if any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. The remedy for our endless thirsting is not to stop thirsting, which we cannot do and should not want to, but to bring the thirst to the right fountain. My soul thirsteth for God, the psalmist cried, for the living God, and he was right to thirst so, and right to bring that thirst to God alone. Stop hauling water from the broken cisterns. Come to the fountain of living waters, and drink, and let the spring rise in you.

THE DEEP WELL OF FORMS

There is a deeper lesson in the well beside which they spoke. Jacob’s well was ancient and honored, a religious inheritance handed down through many generations, deep and revered. And yet, for all its depth and honor, it gave only the water that leaves a soul thirsting again. It is a picture of religion without the Spirit, of the inherited forms of worship, deep and venerable and insufficient, from which a soul may draw all its life and still be dry. Men may keep the well faithfully, and revere it, and haul from it daily, and never once taste the living water.

The woman herself, feeling the pressure of the Lord’s words, turned at once to a question of religious form, of whether men ought to worship in this mountain or at Jerusalem, the old dispute of place and rite. And the Lord lifted her past the whole question. The hour cometh, he said, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father seeketh such to worship him. God is a Spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. He turned her from the outward well of place and form to the inward water of the Spirit, for it is not the mountain nor the temple nor the rite that gives the living water, but the Spirit worshipped in spirit and in truth.

We are as prone as she was to mistake the deep well of forms for the living water. We can be content with the inherited practice, the bucket and the rope of religion, the outward observance kept and revered, and thirst still, and never suspect that we have been drawing from a well that was never meant to satisfy the soul, only to point it to the fountain. The letter killeth, the apostle says, but the spirit giveth life. The forms are the channel; the Spirit is the water. A channel without water is a dry ditch, however ancient and well-built, and much religion is exactly that, a fine dry channel from which the thirsty draw and draw and are never filled.

When the woman had found the living water, she did a small and telling thing. She left her waterpot, and went her way into the city, and told what she had found. She left the waterpot, the vessel of the old drawing, the tool of the endless daily labor at the well that leaves you thirsting again, for she had found a water that made the old vessel unnecessary. It is a sign of the soul that has truly found the spring, that it no longer clutches the bucket, no longer trusts the forms to fill it, having found the living water that the forms could only point to.

This is what makes the desert bearable to the solitary, and the dry season endurable to any soul. When the outward wells all fail, when the comforts are gone and the visible provisions run dry, the one who has the inner spring is not left thirsting, for his water does not come from outside him and cannot be taken away. The Lord shall guide thee continually, the prophet promised, even in drought, and make thee like a spring of water whose waters fail not. In the very wilderness, the inner well rises. So come, and drink, and let Christ give you what no cistern of your own hewing ever held, a well of water springing up, within you, into everlasting life.