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Jesus answered her, “If you had known the gift of God and who it is who said to you, ‘Give me some water to drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” “Sir,” the woman said to him, “you have no bucket and the well is deep; where then do you get this living water?”

…Jesus replied, “Everyone who drinks some of this water will be thirsty again. But whoever drinks some of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again, but the water that I will give him will become in him a fountain of water springing 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 4:10-11, 13-15

He would come routinely on Saturday mornings, just as Mom was doing her weekend chores. In a flutter, she’d rush to finish vacuuming, flinging a promise over her shoulder that she would put the biscuits in the oven as soon as she was done. In the meantime, my grandfather and I would sit in the buttery light of the kitchen window, and he would talk to me about God. 

It wasn’t until many years later I realized he came during cleaning time on purpose. As I leaned over a fence post in our beautiful farm valley with him one day, he told me so. The Lord had given him a task, and he was set to obey.

My grandfather was a mountain preacher. He loved Jesus, and He loved justice. He spent his life advocating for victims of injustice, sometimes taking on their shame as his own in the fight. He went out of his way to talk to the shamed. And he talked to them like Jesus did. He talked to me that way, every Saturday morning.

Jesus speaks to us mysteries before we are old enough to fully understand them. He does not dumb down profundity and beauty. An orchid is not simplified for one who does not know its Latin name, nor the labels for its parts. 

Jesus speaks to our potential, for He knows we were created for fullness, beauty, and all His glory. He tells us truths we cannot yet grasp, but in the telling, He mesmerizes us with the possibility of more than what we understand and see today.

My grandfather would tell me how God spoke to him through a passage of Scripture that week. How he had learned a lesson about God’s love while helping a neighbor. A dream he’d had where He awoke searching out his window for Jesus, whose powerful presence he could still feel in the room.

I was a child, but he mesmerized me with tales of a God who was so much more than I could understand and see.

He made me thirst for living water.

Jesus spoke to the Samaritan woman truths she could not fathom in her weary, exhausted routine of labor and shame. She responded as expected: with logic. Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water. 

Yet Jesus knew her potential. He knew that she would indeed drink of this living water and go share it with everyone she knew. Indeed, she would share it with you and me today.

Jesus speaks to our potential before we have reached it. He enthralls us with mysterious truths so tantalizing that they capture our souls’ longing for more than we can understand and see. #spiritualgrowth Share on X

But, like children, our imaginations are ignited by such talk. Such truth. Our very souls know there is more.

More may be moments away, like it was for the Samaritan woman. More may come gradually like a glorious sunrise, as it did in my life over the years since those priceless conversations with my grandfather. 

But you can be sure of this. More will come.

Lord, speak to me today. I am listening, and I am thirsty for more. Amen.

@audreycfrank

Photo by David Clode on Unsplash