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Leaving Our Waterpots Behind
Leaving Our Waterpots Behind
Daniel Ruegg
Upon meeting a Samaritan woman at a well who had come to draw water, Jesus indicated His hope to stir up within her a deep curiosity of His true identity with a dependent thirst for His spiritual provisions in her life. “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water,” (Jn. 4:10). It is evident by the end of their conversation that Jesus has successfully accomplished His desire to awaken within her a deep spiritual need for the great gift of God greater than any satisfaction this life can offer when, in her excitement to reveal to the men of the city the astonishing revelation she had come to, she actually leaves behind the very instrument she had initially brought
with her to satisfy earthly temporary needs. “So the woman left her waterpot, and went into the city,” (Jn. 4:28). As we noted this dramatic change in the woman’s desires from physical thirst to a spiritual longing for truth in our bible class, brother Kent Davis noted an interesting observation from our own contemporary world’s acknowledgment of a true desire to thirst for something more meaningful and satisfying than what this life provides as revealed through various rock lyrics ranging from “I can’t get no satisfaction” to “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.” It’s astonishing how honest, especially from a musician’s point of view, mankind is in their understanding of how weak and futile earthly pleasures truly are compared to what they could have if only they knew where to look and who to ask for it. It reminded me of another famous musician who not only acknowledged this same sad truth with the lyric “Can’t Buy Me Love” but actually went looking for answers seeking the counsel of famed televangelist Oral Roberts. In David Edwin Harrell’s 1985 biography Oral Roberts: An American Life, there is the transcript of a letter penned by John Lennon as he revealed his own frustrations with his “waterpots” and how he deeply desired something that could satisfy the soul. “Rev. Roberts, this is ex-Beatle, John Lennon. I’ve been wanting to write you but I guess I didn’t really want to face reality. I never do this, this is why I take drugs. Reality frightens me and paranoids me. True, I have a lot of money, being a Beatle, been all around the world, but basically I’m afraid to face the problems of life. Let me begin to say, I regret that I said the Beatles were more popular than Jesus. I don’t even like myself anymore, guilt. My cousin, Marilyn McCabe has tried to help me. She told me you were praying for me.... As the song we wrote is that we wrote, Paul and me, “Money Can’t Buy Me Love,” it’s true. The point is this, I want happiness. I don’t want to keep up with drugs. Paul told me once, ‘You made fun of me for not taking drugs, but you will regret it in the end.’ Explain to me what Christianity can do for me? Is it phoney? Can He love me? I want out of hell. Sincerely, John.
P.S. I am, I hate to say, under the influence of pills now. I can’t stop. I only wish I could thank you for caring.” Amazing how candidly honest he was about the personal “hell” of dragging your “waterpot” again and again to worldly forms of joy that only create an even more desperate haunting awareness of how thirsty you really are for something more. Sadly, despite his own awareness of the ironic emptiness in the life of one possessing ultimate fame, talent, money and pleasures, Lennon ended up going right back to the inferior “waterpots” in his own life as corroborated in his song “You Saved My Soul” when he sang, “When I was lonely and scared, I nearly fell for a TV preacher in a hotel room in Tokyo. Remember the time I went to jump right out the apartment window on the west side of town of old New York. You saved me from that suicide and...I wanna thank you, thank you, thank you for saving my soul with your true love.” There is a world full of lost empty souls who crave to be filled with the abundant joy that only God can provide and give through His Son Jesus. As Christians, disciples of Jesus with an intimate understanding of the abundant and more deeply satisfying joys found only in the gift of God, we have an opportunity to help guide these thirsty souls to the eternal fount in Christ. “And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who wishes take the water of life without cost,” (Rev. 22:17). But the question is, what does the world see in us? Do they witness within us this unparalleled sense of elation we have in our lives from the eternal source we have found in Christ, or do they see us carrying the same “waterpots” the world uses to satisfy our thirst? Let’s follow the example of the Samaritan woman, and leave the waterpots behind as we seek to tell others of what can be found in the true gift of God. “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly,” (Jn. 10:10).
