Water in the Desert

When I was teaching at Delgado, I used to take the summers off so that I could return fresh and enthusiastic in the fall.  After one summer hiatus, I was greeted by a colleague of mine:  Gayle, it's so good to see you again!  It's like water in the desert!

His words sent a chill through me, as I realized the implications of his metaphor.  The words of Jesus were literally -- not metaphorically-- true:

He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him (Jn. 7:38).

You might think that I tell this story to, in the words of St. Paul, "puff myself up."  I do not.  The reason a chill went through me at that moment was that I realized the Source of the Living Water Morgan referred to, and I also realized that I could never then or in the future have manufactured anything close to it from myself.

In the 4th chapter of John's Gospel, Jesus meets the Samaritan woman at the well -- you know, the one who had been married 5 times already, the one who had to come to the well at noon instead of early in the morning, when all the village women would meet and exchange gossip -- about her, no doubt.  In fact, scholars tell us that this well was not in the village itself, but about a mile on the edge of the village.  Did she go out to the remote well instead of going to the one in the middle of the village, just so she would not run the risk of meeting anyone?

But Jesus was there, waiting for her.  "Give me a drink," He asked her.  Startled, she wanted to know why He spoke to her.  If you know anything about Saudi Arabia today, you understand her confusion: no man would dare speak in public to a strange woman.  No Jew would descend to speak to a Samaritan, even if he were dying of thirst.

He promised her "a spring of water welling up to eternal life (zoe)."  She was desperate for this water; in her desperation, she became the very first missionary.  Dropping her water jug, she ran back to the village to tell everyone that she had met the Messiah, and they came out with her to see Jesus and to hear him.  He stayed with them two days, and many of them became believers.  [After His resurrection, Mary Magdalene also became 'the Apostle to the Apostles,' telling them that she had seen Jesus alive.]

Okay, so that's not the end of the story.  In John, Chapter 7, during the great festival of water, Jesus stood up in the Temple area and said, If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink.  Whoever believes in Me....streams of living water will flow from within him. 

Both Mary Magdalene and the woman at the well were thirsty enough to drink from the Spring of Water welling up to eternal life.  They were not just a little thirsty -- they were parched to the point of drying up inside.  To them, Jesus was not just an itinerate preacher with a few choice words; He was Water in the Desert of their lives.  He was Life Itself!  And drinking thirstily from the Source of Living Water, they themselves, without knowing how, became a stream of living water poured out to those around them.

No one can take any credit at all for being thirsty, or for being more thirsty than anyone else.  It just happens when nothing else can satisfy your thirst.  Those who have found the Source of Living Water keep returning to drink deeply of its satisfying drafts.  And somehow, that Living Water becomes a stream in the desert, flowing out from within the believer.

Sirach 24 has always been one of my favorite readings:

Now, I, like a rivulet from her stream [Wisdom's],

channeling the waters into a garden,

Said to myself, "I will water my plants,

my flower bed I will drench;"

And suddenly this rivulet of mine became a river,

then this stream of mine, a sea.

Thus do I send my teachings forth shining like the dawn,

to become know afar off.

Thus do I pour out instruction like prophecy

and bestow it on generations to come.

Many people want to do great things; I just want to drink deeply from the Water of Life; I want to water my own little garden and keep the plants alive.  I cannot create the water; I can only channel it.  But the more I drink in, the more it seems to flow out of me to the world around me.

St. Paul once wrote, "I wish that all men could be like me."  His words were not arrogance at all, as they might seem.  Rather, they came from a deep realization of the gift he had been given:  to know Christ Jesus as the Source of all Life, as the Source of deep satisfaction, as the Water of Eternal Life flowing into a thirsty world:  I have come that you might have life, and have it more abundantly.