Living Water at the Well

By S.G.D.

Clean, uncontaminated drinking water is a precious commodity in many countries. The need for water transcends cultures, for our bodies are 65% water and need to be continually rehydrated. Water is a perennially relevant metaphor for life, used by Jesus: "If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink. He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water" (John 7:38-39).

ABWE missionaries in many different countries use water as a spiritual analogy. One issionary to China, recently wrote of how he used the "salt of the earth" metaphor in Matthew 5:13-16: "In the arid desert climate, Beijingers suffer constant thirst. People carry water bottles everywhere they go. In a deeper sense, Christians are called to do the same. Everywhere we go, we should not only carry the Living Water, but also be the salt which creates the thirst for Christ."

Pure Water

In Togo, a team of ABWE medical missionaries recently taught typhoid prevention to a village which had recently been devastated by the disease. After presenting skits on transmission, symptoms, and prevention, the team described spiritual needs, using the analogy that like the water, contaminated by typhoid and other bacteria, we are not pure, and the result of our impurity is death. The only cure is Christ, the Living Water; only He is pure and can purify believers of the disease of sin.

Drilling Wells in Afghanistan

In John 4, we find that Jesus uses a well both as an analogy of eternal life-"the water I shall give shall be a well of water springing up in everlasting life"-and as a physical staging point for the sharing of the gospel (14). He reaches out cross-culturally to the woman at the well when he asks her to draw water. "How is it," she asks, "that thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me, who am a woman of Samaria? For the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans" (9). Later, we learn many Samaritans came to believe because of Jesus' witness to the woman.

In Afghanistan, ABWE's WIN Ministries is planning to drill a well for a university without any water at all. In the past, students rioted and pleaded with the local warlord governor to find a water source. Relationship building has begun with this official warlord, and our team will drill the well in 2003. By meeting physical water needs, WIN hopes to build friendships and earn the opportunity to share Christ with the lost and dying people of Afghanistan.

The very act of drilling can be presented as a spiritual analogy for living in Christ: we should be so thirsty that we will plunge deeply into His Word, seeking Christ, the Living Water. WIN's great desire is to hear the Afghani people cry out, like the woman at the well, "Sir, give me this water, that I thirst not" (John 4:15).