Come to the Waters

Living Water display at the BURG Retreat

Talk given to the Baptist Union Retreat Group this week, the theme of which was 'water'.

On our first visit to Venice, in the early years of our marriage and on a holiday when we counted every lira (pre-Euro days), I dropped the only bottle of water we had left.  The next day we were driving to the Black Forest, so we had no local currency to buy anymore.  It was a boiling hot day and I remember the sound it made as the bottle hit the pavement and burst.

Water is so important and so easy to take for granted.

The other night we attended a talk at a village hall.  My family, many generations ago, came from a village near Amersham called Sarratt, so we turned up at the Sarratt Historical Society’s evening talk on local pubs.  We loved the history and reckoned my relatives would have known quite a few of these establishments, and in the questions afterwards a lady asked a very pertinent question:  Did anyone know when piped water came to the village?  Of course, ale and beer were considered healthier options in the day when water was scarce or contaminated.  Piped, running water transformed lives.

Jesus calls himself and the gospel he taught:  Life Giving Water.

It was a metaphor all about being refreshed and sustained.  Water is life giving to the body.  Living Water is life giving to the soul.

I find this symbolism so encouraging.  That faith and belief in God can bring such a positive understanding to life.  It can sustain us and makes so much possible.

This year I was very taken by the Old Testament reading set for the 2^nd Sunday of Lent from Isaiah 55.  In it the prophet invites those returning from Exile to Come to the Waters.

No longer are these the waters of Babylon, but of Jerusalem.

And yet, returning home wasn’t going to be easy.  The city was in ruins, there would be quarrels about land and food was in short supply.  Maybe this wasn’t the Utopia they were longing for.

And maybe emerging from Covid isn’t Utopia either, especially when it feels just as one world crisis is beginning to subside and another started.

But 500 years before Jesus, Isaiah calls a returning people who will be facing continuing struggles even though they have returned home to Come to the Water.  A call of hope.  A call to trust.  A call to receive God’s help and sustaining joy.

2000 years ago Jesus issued the same call to the Woman at the Well.  Come to the Water, drink of this living water and let it be a well of water springing up inside you to nourish and sustain.

It's still a wonderful invitation and a life sustaining promise:
Isaiah says: Come to the Water.
Jesus says: I am the Living Water.