LIVING WATER by Vicki Taylor

I’m standing in my yard watching the water flow down through the dry yard as I'm watering my plants in the flower beds. My husband has noticed that only the areas where the water runs is where the grass is green. Everything else is dry, parched or dead. I wonder if this is what the heart looks like in a drought. You see, even though others all around us have gotten intermittent showers, we have not, and our yard is drying up and dying, like the human heart can do during dry times.

Droughts can come in many shapes and sizes: disease, divorce, death…they all can cause the heart to dry up and die. But …what a difference a little water can make. I know, I’ve seen and experienced it both in my garden and in my heart.

You see, water always flows down. We live on a hill; therefore, every time I water, the water flows down my yard toward the gully that crosses my yard. It has cut its own path across the yard and follows its own trail. I’ve stood and watched it flow, filling the hollowed out areas, looking for even lower places to flow.  

I began to realize, this is how spiritual water flows and fills my heart when I fill it from the spiritual well of God’s Word. It flows down into all the dry crevices of my parched heart and waters it. But … I must go lower to be filled; I must bow down to receive the living water. The proud cannot be filled. God has to strip us of our pride in order for us to bow low: always low, seeking the lowest places in order to be filled.  

I stoop low to feel the water run through my fingers toward the dry earth. I want this water. I want His water. I want to drink long and deep from the well that never dries up and never be thirsty again. I want to be a spring of gushing water to refresh others, to encourage and water them, to watch them flourish under the life-giving water from the everlasting well. I stoop low to see the water flow. I want to see… 

I want to see Him and be refreshed.

Jesus said in His Word, “Whoever drinks the water I give will never be thirsty. The water I give will become a spring of water gushing up inside that person, giving eternal life.” (John 4:14)