SPRINGING UP!

SPRINGING UP!

John 4:10-14

10 Jesus answered and said unto her, If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water.

11 The woman saith unto him, Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep: from whence then hast thou that living water?

12 Art thou greater than our father Jacob, which gave us the well, and drank thereof himself, and his children, and his cattle?

13 Jesus answered and said unto her, Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again:

14 But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.

          Jesus’ conversation with the much-married yet un-married woman at the well once again provides the backdrop for today’s devotional thought. We are all prone to allow circumstances to direct our emotions and our lives. I wonder if the Samaritan woman was having a good day or was she walking trudging along with her head hung low? The forensic study of the timing of her visit to the well suggests that she did not want to be bothered by people, let alone a stuffy Jew, but there was Jesus and he would change everything!

          Dwight L. Moody once commented upon the difference between joy and happiness. He said: “Happiness is caused by things that happen around me, and circumstances will mar it; but joy flows right on through trouble; joy flows on through the dark; joy flows in the night as well as in the day; joy flows all through persecution and opposition. It is an unceasing fountain bubbling up in the heart; a secret spring the world can't see and doesn't know anything about. The Lord gives his people perpetual joy when they walk in obedience to him.”

          You see, joy is not showered down from the outside along with a torrent of exterior blessings, it springs up from the inside from a continually renewing source. It is part of the essence of the Christian experience. Every Christian life is an individual story full of different circumstances, some good and some bad, but every story has the same happy ending. We all arrive safely and joyfully in heaven! Along the way, as our story is told, there is strength for every trial and supply for every need.

                Dr. Barnes, in his notes, says of the Christian experience: “[It is] like an ever-living fountain, that flows at all seasons of the year, in heat and cold, and in all external circumstances of weather, whether foul or fair, wet or dry. So religion always lives; and, amid all changes of external circumstances—in heat and cold, hunger and thirst, prosperity and adversity, life, persecution, contempt, or death—it still lives on, and refreshes and cheers the soul.”

Dear Lord, be to each of your children today a fresh drink of the water of life. AMEN