After the fog rolled away, we packed up the car and headed to the river. The initial chill of the water faded as we splashed, swam, threw rocks, and floated in the gentle current. After spending the morning at the river, we headed home to clean up and make lunch.
But in a nearly five-year-old’s mind, we had just taken a bath, so why would we need to take another one? His mom gently explained that his body was just as dirty as the swim trunks he had just removed, marked by the grime of the river.
As soon as we returned to the house, I bounded upstairs to clean up quickly, then fix lunch for the hungry crew. But as soon as I stepped in the shower and allowed the clean water to wash over me, the sentiment of “quickly” washed away with the dirt. I felt renewed and refreshed. I did not want to get out and I never wanted that feeling to end.
My thoughts then turned to the deeper feeling of renewal we receive when bathed by the cleansing power of the Living Water. Have you tasted of that refreshment?
My feeble and futile attempts at renewal by other means fall short of what can only be provided by the source of True Living Water.
Jeremiah refers to the Lord as a spring of living water. And whether we are washed clean by it, as in the waters of baptism, and the renewed cleansing of repentance, or drink of this living water, there is nothing else like it.
John 4:13-14
Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 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.”
John 7:37b-38
“Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.”