The ocean waves push and pull, rhythmically rocking my ears and eyes. They lull me into drowsiness. Relaxes the tension I hold in my shoulders and stomach. That tension stays with me most of the time. I hold it tight because it holds me together. Or so that’s how it feels.
But at the ocean, my shoulders relax a little. My stomach-knots begin to untangle. The tension begins to melt.
The ocean isn’t the only place to unwind the mess of tightness inside of me. The unwinding can happen anywhere. It isn’t a physical place that offers me the chance to gain perspective. It isn’t food or drink that gives me that opportunity. No. I can reach that place of surrender sitting in my everyday chair, doing my everyday stuff.
The woman at the well was going about her normal routine. She needed that water down that long dusty road. She made that trip every day. It was her mundane life. It was the rut of her existence. It was a rocky rut that sometimes left her bruised and bleeding both physically and emotionally. Spirit crushing mundane.
But on that day, a Stranger asked for a drink of water. She had no clue that it was her that needed a drink of water from Him. How could she know? She kept her head down, focused on getting what she needed because isn’t that what we all do? Avert the eyes from anything that may interrupt our little self-made existence.
Her aversion was learned behavior from years of ridicule. Her decisions had not been stellar. Once the spiral began, it kept going. And before she knew it, she was used up and spent. The filth of the road only stuck to her feet but the filth of her life stuck to every fiber of her being.
And here was this Stranger. He didn’t seem so strange the longer she stood in His presence. There was something oddly comforting about His voice. Nothing she had ever experienced could compare to being here with Him.
What did He mean about the water He would give? He asked her for a drink of water. Breaking customs, He asked her for a simple sip for a parched tongue. He offered her something far greater.
It wasn’t in ocean waves that she found satiation. It wasn’t drawing water from the bottom of a well. She didn’t find it in the first or fifth husband. There was only one place where she found the release of everything she held so tightly.
The words of the Stranger touched her soul. The living water He poured into her lit a flame. She dropped her vessels and changed her focus. No longer desiring temporary physical satisfaction, she found the soul satiating spring of living water.
In His presence, she found refuge. Renewal. Transformation. Cleansing. Scales dropping from eyes. Stony heart melting into flesh. Wondrous news that she shared. One encounter started a revival.
So, it isn’t at the ocean I find release. The physical pushing and pulling of the waves bring physical soothing. But the soothing I long for comes in the mundane messes of my everyday existence.
Rising early each morning. Opening worn binding. Laying bare my heart for Him to shape. Focusing my thoughts on the One who offers me living water just like He did for that woman at the well.
