The Soul Anchor [Hebrews 6:19] - October 1, 2023
While shopping at a local Walmart recently I caught the store’s drinking fountain out of the corner of my eye. There was no one drinking from the fountain, and I thought that I couldn’t remember seeing anyone in recent memory drinking from that or any other public drinking fountain. Can you remember seeing anyone drinking from our drinking fountain at Lifeway? Did you know that we have a drinking fountain at Lifeway? (Hint: It’s in the hall of the Education Building near the men’s bathroom) I stayed at Walmart for about 15 minutes pretending to look at the Christmas decorations that had just been put out on the shelves and waiting to see if anyone would take a drink – no one did. Ultimately, I found an employee nearby and asked her if anyone ever drank from the fountain and she smiled and said, “No, never.” I asked her why she thought that was and she replied, “It’s old and people prefer bottled water today.” I thought those were good answers and the reality that there are health concerns about anything public in a post-covid world. It can also be a chore for organizations or government entities to maintain drinking fountains today.
I believe the soft drink companies struck gold when they figured out how to filter and bottled water and sell it at what is, in many cases now, roughly the same price as a bottle of soda. I think that there is no doubt that the public drinking fountain is going the way of the phone booth but I personally have very fond memories of running to the drinking fountain with my friends after some serious play at the park or having one of my parents hold me up at the drinking fountain because I was too short to reach or holding my daughter up to the drinking fountain because she was too short to reach. When I was thirsty growing up the public drinking fountain was the place to be. It reminds me of a story in the Bible when people gathered at a well to get a drink.
John 4:7-14:
“When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew, and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans. Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?” 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.”
The best water is the living water which Jesus still offers today! However, like drinking fountain water, most people have moved on from the living water Jesus offers and have moved into different philosophies and worldviews that they believe will satisfy their spiritual thirst in life. These philosophies and worldviews seem easier and more convenient than going to the well of God’s word for truth and direction. Still, the living water that Jesus spoke of promises to well up in us to eternal life. There is truly no other name under heaven by which we can be saved.
How about you? When you are spiritually thirsty where do you turn? Only Jesus offers living water.
God Bless,
Pastor Frank