A woman comes to a well to draw water. Just as she has for her whole life. To the same well that her family line has come to for generations. The kind of monotonous, rote, day-in, day-out task that must be done if one wants to go on living.
But then, one day, she encounters a man (a prophet, she guesses), who says he has water that quenches thirst once and for all. Her response is good fodder for learning how to pray: “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”
Is your soul thirsty? More than that, are you growing weary of constantly pulling from the same temporarily satisfying well day-in, day-out?
The thing is, we do need to keep returning to a well. Some well. Often the same wells our family has drawn from for generations. We just go back to what we know, down the paths we’ve been taught. Because we are finite creatures. We are dependent on outside energy and life to sustain us. The answer to soul-thirst that Jesus gives is not a one-stop, one-time fix, but a different well. An alternative water source that satisfies on a deeper level. Jesus doesn’t magically remove our need for freshly imbibed life; he offers us a more life-giving source. It’s just better water. Which requires us to do business with whatever other wells we may have been drawing from. To see their insufficiency. To say to them, “Thanks, but no thanks,” and to begin drawing from his well.
Learn to pray like the woman at the well, filling in the blank with your own unsatisfying wells:
Lord Jesus, give me your water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming to ________________ to draw water
