John 4:10-14 (NIVUK)
10 Jesus answered her, ‘If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.’
11 ‘Sir,’ the woman said, ‘you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?’
13 Jesus answered, ‘Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.’
There’s a real contrast at play in these verses. The woman is thinking of the water in the well. She’s looking ‘down’, the well is deep (fourth century sources suggest 100 feet deep), and she’s looking backwards, this was given to them in the past by Jacob. Chances are this water will have been standing water, and as a result a bit stale. Her awareness of the present and reverence for the past, has blinded her however to what Jesus is offering. The water he’s offering isn’t stale standing water, but living, bubbling, fresh flowing water. It isn’t deep, but welling up (the phrase used here is one again full of life and movement, it is gushing, or leaping up).
Thank you Jesus that you came to give us life and life to the full!
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