Thirsty Again
Last week, we wrapped up Vacation Bible School at our church, and I had the joy of teaching the children about the woman at the well in John 4. I began the lesson with an illustration, holding a small cup of water and pouring it for each kid, asking, “Is this enough water for the week?” They all looked at me like I was crazy. “No way,” one of them said. “I’d die,” another responded. “Exactly,” I said. I then explained how almost everyone goes through life taking one small sip after another, hoping it will finally be enough. A little sip of achievement. A little sip of entertainment. A little sip of affirmation. But no matter how cold or refreshing it feels in the moment, it never lasts. We’re always thirsty again.
In John 4, Jesus meets a woman coming to draw water in the heat of the day. She’s isolated, ashamed, and tired—not just physically, but spiritually. Jesus asks her for a drink, and in doing so, opens a conversation that goes far deeper than a dusty well in Samaria. Jesus tells her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.” At first, she doesn’t understand. She thinks Jesus is talking about a different kind of water source. But Jesus is speaking of water that refreshes and enlivens her soul, not her tongue.
The woman then asks Jesus to give her this living water, but Jesus sees beyond the question into her heart. He replies, “Go, call your husband, and come back to me.” The woman responds, “I have no husband,” but Jesus sees the deeper truth, the deeper reality. She’s been searching for satisfaction her whole life. Five husbands. A man who’s not her husband now. A string of broken sips that never quenched the thirst. And Jesus knows about all of it. He lays her sin bare with pinpoint accuracy, yet He doesn’t mock or reject her. He offers her an invitation. He doesn’t excuse the sin. He exposes it. But He does so not to shame her, but to save her, because Jesus came to quench the thirst she’s always had. “Whoever drinks of the water that I will give him,” Jesus says, “will never be thirsty again.” That’s the kind of offer only God can make.
The woman, uncomfortable now, tries to change the subject by asking a theological question. But Jesus doesn’t get sidetracked. He gently steers the conversation back to the real issue: Who He is. “I who speak to you am He,” Jesus tells her. In other words, “I am the Messiah. I am the One your soul has been thirsting for. And I alone am the living water you need.” Overwhelmed by Jesus’s compassion, grace, and divine soul-piercing knowledge, the woman believes. She leaves her water jar, symbolically leaving behind the old ways she tried to fill her soul, and runs to her town to tell everyone. The woman who was too ashamed to be seen in public is now the first evangelist in Samaria. Because when you taste living water, you can’t keep it to yourself.
And what’s remarkable is that her invitation is our invitation too. All of us begin this life spiritually dry, sipping on anything and everything we can, hoping it will satisfy. The well of achievement. The well of distraction. The well of relationships. But like salt water, it never satisfies. But Jesus offers something better. He doesn’t give us a sip. He gives us a spring. A love that sees everything about us and still invites us in. A Savior who exposes sin not to shame us, but to save us. Like the woman at the well, we’ve all tried to fill our lives with things that never last. But Jesus stands ready to give living water, which is Himself. And His offer still stands two thousand years later. Come to Him. Drink deeply. And never thirst again.
