How is God Like a Well?

Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash

Jesus, you might have noticed, is a pretty good teacher (G.O.A.T. is the expression kids use these days). So when He teaches a lesson, that lesson has multiple levels of meaning - a child can understand most of His parables and illustrations, but scholars devote their whole lives to studying those same stories and never reach the bottom of their depths. My work in environmental science has helped me understand (a little, anyway) some different layers of one metaphor Jesus used.

I used to work as a water conservationist, helping to prevent Florida’s freshwater aquifers from being overdrawn. I’m not talking about getting people to turn off the faucet while brushing their teeth (though you really should do that); I’m talking about helping farmers save millions of gallons of water each year growing thousands of acres of oranges. I have learned much about where water comes from (besides dark clouds).

So when I read Jesus’s conversation with the Samaritan woman in John 4, the Savior’s words about living water stand out to me. Here’s the story:

     “A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.” Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.””

      John 4:7-15 ESV

Before my career in conservation, I didn’t think much about where my drinking water came from other than the faucet. To me, Jesus’s living water was a simple metaphor - we have a spiritual thirst, and God is the one who satisfies it. Later on in his gospel (7:38-39), John identifies this living water as the Holy Spirit.

That simple interpretation is, I believe, correct. But there’s more to flesh out here. I decided to explore this living water from the perspective of John’s first readers, and from an understanding of water itself, and see what else the master Teacher might be telling us.

Water in Jesus’ Day

Like I used to, modern Americans take water for granted. In most places in this country, water is incredibly cheap and convenient. We get it for free at restaurants (with ice!). We pay extra to get it in plastic bottles. Here in Florida, people spray millions of gallons of perfectly drinkable water on their lawns just to keep their grass green in the springtime (I don’t.). People who live in arid countries must think we’re insane, and they’d have a decent argument.

It's easy to forget that in Jesus's day, water was something people had to think about a lot. They had to go to the well to collect water whenever they needed it - as in, always - come rain or shine, health or sickness. In those days, if you didn’t plan for getting water, you didn’t live very long. Jesus’ conversation with the Samaritan woman was more meaningful than we might realize. They were talking about a life-sustaining substance that people had to work for.

The setting is significant. According to the commentary in my ESV Study Bible (Crossway), Jesus intentionally travelled through Samaria, a land of people despised for being part Jewish and part gentile - some Jews even travelled a longer route just to go around this area. The Samaritans didn’t worship along with the full-blooded Jews in Jerusalem; they had their own scriptures and traditions. It was scandalous for a man like Jesus to talk to such a woman, but Jesus struck up a conversation. He went out of His way to reach a broken person in a broken place.

Jacob’s well isn’t mentioned in the Old Testament, but it’s understood by tradition to be a place where God provided water for the fathers of Isreal, and Joseph was buried nearby. Today there’s a church on the site where this conversation is believed to have taken place, and you can even draw water from the well next time you’re visiting the West Bank town of Nablus.

Water in Light of Science

Geologists have learned some interesting things about wells that the Samaritan woman surely didn’t know, but the Creator of the universe did. She was probably aware that a well is an access point to water. But we now have a much greater understanding of aquifers, underground reservoirs protected from evaporation and contamination by layers of sand and rock. In light of our knowledge about wells and aquifers, let’s consider some implications of Jesus’ living water illustration.

Our Need

A well is a single point of access for an aquifer - in many places one well serves a community of people. Like the Samaritan woman, people must travel from their homes and collect water for their family’s use.

Like the water people draw from a well, the living water of the Spirit satisfies a thirst. As our bodies crave life-sustaining water, so our souls crave intimacy with the life-giving God. It’s what we were created for. For the Old Testament people of God, this meant constantly returning to the spiritual well - going to the temple to offer sacrifices and having what fellowship with God was available outside the Holy of Holies. But under the New Covenant, the living water of the Holy Sprit is like having a well right in your home; no more walking, no more waiting, no more working to try to get enough. The living water is always available and plentiful, within believers.

God’s Provision

A second thing to consider about wells and aquifers is that they are God’s provision. When He created the Earth, God positioned the planet and formed the atmosphere just so, so that water can exist here, and thus life (and coffee). When He fashioned the layers of the world, He made the crust a mixture of solid and porous materials so that freshwater would store up there and be available when needed.

No human put the water in the ground (in modern times, we have some Aquifer Storage and Recovery wells, but these are rare). The woman at the well did not make the aquifer, she only came and drew.  God filled those storehouses thousands of years before she came to draw water in the heat of the day, because He knew long before she was born that she would encounter her Savior there.

Likewise, we cannot create or control the movement of the living water of the Spirit - we can only come and receive.The living water of the Holy Spirit was God’s plan for His people before time began. We see that The Spirit was active under the Old Covenant, and He entered the Church with power at Pentecost. The New Covenant, with the Spirit in the people of God, is God’s perfect plan of provision for His people (so many Ps) from the beginning.

One Spirit for All

A third thing to consider about aquifers is that we all receive the same substance (water). People who draw from the well might use it for drinking or cooking or washing camels. But they all draw the same substance from the same well.

Likewise, through faith we all receive the same Spirit. Though He gives us each different provisions for each moment, ultimately, we all receive the same thing: God Himself. People who draw on the living water might need Him for strength or comfort or forgiveness or reconciliation, but we all draw from the same well of living water. He invites the Jew and the Samaritan and the Christian.

The Spirit’s Grandeur

A fourth way aquifers are a picture of the living water is that the source of the well is invisible to us. When you draw a bucket of water from a well, you don’t often stop to think that there might be a billion more buckets of water underneath you. Depending on withdrawals and on the recharge rate (which varies based on depth, rocks and sediments, and rainfall), the well you drink from today might still be there thousands of years in the future (and might be in use the day Jesus comes back to make all things new). The enormity and longevity of the source is invisible to you, and therefore easy to underestimate or take for granted.

So it is with the Holy Spirit. Our little minds can’t grasp how deep and huge and eternal He is, and the invisibility of His presence makes it easy to forget His grandeur. When we experience the sorrow of mourning, or the fear of losing a job, or the shame of our past being exposed, our enemy wants us to think that the well is running dry, that God is limited, and that He only has a certain amount of living water for us. But the aquifer of grace is deep and pure and everlasting. There are unseen oceans available to satisfy our spiritual thirst for eternity.

The Creation Speaks of God

Anyone can read what Jesus says about living water and understand that God provides the thing our souls thirst for: Himself. But when we consider the well, and know something about the invisible aquifers from which water comes, we see that there is more to the illustration. All of God’s creation speaks in this way, revealing truth about its Maker. I rejoice that Jesus uses the visible creation to reveal spiritual truth.

Come and drink from the aquifer of living water, and He will satisfy forever.