Water is one of those things that is all around us and we can’t live without.
Water covers 71% of the earth’s surface, and 70% of our own bodies are made of water. It is essential to all life on earth, and human beings certainly can’t live without it. We each need between one and seven litres of water a day to avoid dehydration. We get much of this through food, for instance, but apparently we need to drink a minimum of 8–10 glasses of water a day (that’s about 2 litres). An average person can only survive up to a week without water.
Given this, it’s not surprising that the Bible has a lot to say about water and our need of it. Take the book of Numbers, for example. The people of Israel were in the desert after God had saved them from slavery in Egypt. But the desert didn’t provide the variety of food that they enjoyed in Egypt. More importantly, in the desert, there was no water. The people complain to Moses:
“Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to this terrible place? It has no grain or figs, grapevines or pomegranates. And there is no water to drink!” (Numbers 20:5)
In response to their complaint, God provides them with water. He produces water from a rock so that the people could drink and live.
Water is essential for our physical life and well-being. We need water to drink and to live. But there is something we need even more than water, something which is essential to our spiritual life and well-being. That is to know the God who made us and provides for us. We need to drink and live from Him as much as we need water to drink, food to eat and oxygen to breathe.
We find the source of that spiritual refreshment through Jesus Christ. The apostle Paul writes in the New Testament of that incident in the desert:
“They all ate the same spiritual food 4 and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ.” (1 Corinthians 10:3,4)
Jesus claims the same thing of himself. In an encounter with a Samaritan woman at a well in John chapter 4, Jesus says:
“Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty 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.” (John 4:13,14)
We need to drink deeply from the well of living water that Jesus provides for each one of us. We need this daily, just as we need a constant supply of water to keep us refreshed and hydrated.
If we fail to drink the water that we need, the water that is essential to life, we will find serious consequences. Dehydration leads to headaches and other complications. If we continue to ignore our need for water, we will face grave illness and even death.
The same is true of our spiritual essential, that living water that Jesus provides. We need to keep drinking from that well or we will face serious complications. I wonder if we have noticed the signs of spiritual dehydration in our lives? Are you feeling parched and dry today? Are you thirsty and in need of refreshment? Let us come back – and come back daily – to drink deeply from the water gushing out of the rock; the living water from the Rock of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.