Bottled Water

As I prepare to begin construction of my Tiny Home this spring, one of the things I am trying to work out is a mobile, off-grid source of water. The solution for anyone who is thirsty has always been easy to figure out. All we need to do is look up!

Look at the picture to the left. Study it. Examine it. What do you see? A water bottle? Some water? Look closer. The water is pouring out of the container. What's behind the container? Blue sky? The sun? That's right. The water is pouring out "from above."

"7 When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” 8 (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)

9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.)

10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

11 “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?”

13 Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.” - John 4:7-15

The thing about bottled water is, although the bottle contains one of the basic elements of life, and can literally save someone's life, it is totally useless until it is opened. I'm one of those bottles of water. I should NOT be full. And, just like a bottle of water, we were created to be emptied.

Is there "living water" in you? Have we opened our little bottle and poured it into someone else? Would people say there is a spring of living water pouring out of us? If we call ourselves Christians we should have been filled up with God's Holy Spirit. We should have been filled to the point of overflowing. And that's the big question, isn't it? "ARE we overflowing?"

Water is a powerful thing. Just ask the Grand Canyon. Just ask the 180,000 people living beneath the Oroville Reservoir in California. Water can change the landscape around us. It can change us too.

The world we live in is in desperate need of "living" water. God provides all the water that the world needs - both to sustain us and to change us. However, we are in short supply of vessels . . . water bottles. That's us. WE are the bottles that contain the living water Jesus speaks of. Are we overflowing? Or do we still have our caps on?

Oroville Dam Video
The Well - Casting Crowns