Healing Springs
Frigid water. Clear, icy cold water spilling across the rocks, pooled in a smooth nature-made basin just waiting for the thirsty to come and drink. That was what was known as the healing springs.
As a child, my interest in the spring water wasn’t medicinal. It was the simple delight of plunging hot, dirty toes and legs, calves-high, in the streams that ran from it. I also had heightened interest in the springs when grandpa sent a cousin to extricate one of the watermelons from where it had been banked in the water’s edge to cool for a summer treat.
The mineral content of the spring water did make it unique, and the taste of water cooled and purified from flowing through the mountains couldn’t be replicated. But healing properties?
When Christ met the woman at Jacob’s well in John 4:7-15, he described to her a water unlike any other, a truly healing spring. The Samaritan woman was there for a bucket of water to quench her thirst. We don’t know how old she was, but we know that she’d had five relationships and was in a sixth relationship as she spoke with Christ that day. From that statement alone, we can guess that her life had been complicated. Jesus described a water that would satisfy more than her physical thirst. He told her that drinking the water that he provided would quench her soul’s thirst and provide eternal life (vs. 13, CEB). He, the living spring, could provide healing for her tattered life, and by drinking, she would have eternal life.
Today, Jesus extends the same offer to us. “All who are thirsty should come to me! All who believe in me should drink! As the scripture said concerning me, Rivers of living water will flow out from within him” (John 7:37-38 CEB).
Physical water can satisfy physical thirst, but spiritual water that flows from Christ provides life everlasting. Are you thirsty? Come and drink from the eternal spring.
– TH –