Living Water {Part II}

I told you last time that I have never been to Israel, and I hereby am telling that I also have never been to Hawai’i. A few years ago I thought I might be going, but my purpose for going kind of dissolved. And so did my plans.
Anyway.
When I think of Hawai’i I always see this in my mind (thanks for the photos, Google):

I don’t ever see this, which I suspect is more like what a lot of you imagine:

Why, you might ask, do I not see a gorgeous beach?

Because I don’t really LIKE beaches. I know, I know. It goes against the American way.

A few summers ago I went to the island of Capri, off the coast of Italy, and I think it scarred me for life.

See, I am really quite pale. And the sun is not a friend to us pale-ones.

 

Do you see how red I am?

Yeah, no bueno.
So that’s why I don’t like beaches. Because beaches suck the life out of me. But I do love what I think of when I think of Hawai’i: jungled waterfalls. I feel like I could spend days there and not get bored with it, and I know I would come away a much better person than I was when I got there.

In that Israel video I was speaking about in the last post there was a time for comments from the students at the end of it. One of them said, “You know, in the same way that Jesus is to be an En Gedi for us, I think it can be implied by the woman of the well story that we are to be an En Gedi for others.”

Isn’t that such an interesting take? It’ leads me to a portion of a verse I didn’t cover in my last post.
John 4:13-14 Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirst again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

It’s that second half I think the student was alluding to. The “Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

Do you see what that means? If Jesus is the Living Water, and if when we accept Christ we are indwelt by the Holy Spirit (who is the same Living Water), then we become a vessel which holds the Living Water. It wells up in us, the verse says.

En Gedi wells up in us.

Isn’t that so cool? It makes me ask myself the question of whether I have allowed the Lord to use me enough in my life as a channel for the Living Water to pass through? Have you ever thought of it that way?

I am convinced that places like En Gedi exist so that we know that life and refreshing and purity and health and Living Water exist in the middle of a life and world which sometimes can feel oh-so-very-much like a desert; like the surroundings of En Gedi. I say this because I am a firm believer in what I would call “imagery” in the Christian life. I believe that there are representations of spiritual truths everywhere. Everything God created in the material world, I believe, is really just a picture of some spiritual truth. Hence, En Gedi, which is a physical place, is just a physical picture created to convey the spiritual truth that Jesus is Living Water. Does that make sense?

Maybe that’s why I always read way into these things.

Ha.

 All this leads me back to what the student said. If Jesus is Living Water unto us, are we, his people, not to be another representation of that?
And why is this even possible, for surely we have no Living Water in and of ourselves?
Because the Living Water that is in us, WELLS UP in us, so that we can encourage each other, build each other up, spur on towards love and good deeds. I mean, isn’t this what we are called to do?! I just talked a bit ago about offering God’s grace to people, and I think these two concepts go hand in hand.

Another student made the comment that just a bit away from En Gedi is the Dead Sea, which from afar looks just like Living Water. It looks refreshing and life-giving and clean.

But then you get closer and you realize that you were wrong on all levels to believe that. The Dead Sea is the opposite of Living Water, amazingly enough. This student was saying that we need to pray for discernment to know the difference between those people and places in our life that may look like pools of living water, but really are just dead seas; people and places that will suck the life FROM us, not channel life INTO us.

Do you feel like you are more of a dead sea to others, or an En Gedi?

I don’t know about you, Wolfies, but in the midst of this desert-like world, I don’t want to be a false-oasis, a mirage, or for someone pale like me, a beach. I don’t want to be another characteristic of the desert or another conveyor of miserable heat. I don’t want to be dirt or fierce winds or sandstorms or dead seas UV rays in the life of the people around me. They already get enough of that in the world.

I have the true embodiment of En Gedi living inside me. Living Water is said to “well up” in me. I want people to know that. I don’t want to be a life-taker like the Dead Sea, I want to be like the Life-Giver, like jungled waterfalls, like En Gedi.