There's a Dave Matthews song called "Don't Drink the Water". In it he portrays the persecution of the American Indians by the settlers of those days and tells of the oppression and crimes committed against them in lyrics that show the cruelty of the times. "Don't drink the water...there's blood in the water..." It is song of remembrance so that, as a nation, we will not forget what we did, and how we did it and why we can never do it again.
But there's also a danger in going from not forgetting...to also not forgiving. This is true of us as a nation but even more so of us as individuals. Let me ask you: how much blood is in your water?
You may not know this but you were born with a well of fresh, cool water to draw upon, there within you, for the life ahead of you, and as soon as you were able to you began to poison it. It's that whole "free will" thing. How can it not lead to sin when you have no clue how to wield it when you first realize you have it? Some people are truly blessed by the Holy Spirit at a young age and they avoid a lot of the bad choices some of us make, but I can tell you that....my well? It was a bloody mess. How about yours?
In the scripture above Jesus is addressing the woman at the well. She is a sinner, like you and me and she is lost, like you and me. But Jesus senses that she is also like you and me in another way: she wants to be found. He speaks of the water in the well in a literal sense (drink all you want, someday you will drink your last, you are only mortal after all) but also in a figurative sense (quit drinking the water of this world and drink the water of salvation, the only water that offers eternal life and can quench that burning fire within you of frustration, sorrow and hopelessness).
In June of 2008 I stopped drinking from my own well. All that blood was making me sick. As I was baptized I came up through cool water into the open face of a brilliantly blue sky and that well within me? It ran clean once again. I'm a billion miles from perfect. I am a man of many wounds. But the water I drink now? It heals me.
You may not know this but you were born with a well of fresh, cool water to draw upon, there within you, for the life ahead of you, and as soon as you were able to you began to poison it. It's that whole "free will" thing. How can it not lead to sin when you have no clue how to wield it when you first realize you have it? Some people are truly blessed by the Holy Spirit at a young age and they avoid a lot of the bad choices some of us make, but I can tell you that....my well? It was a bloody mess. How about yours?
In the scripture above Jesus is addressing the woman at the well. She is a sinner, like you and me and she is lost, like you and me. But Jesus senses that she is also like you and me in another way: she wants to be found. He speaks of the water in the well in a literal sense (drink all you want, someday you will drink your last, you are only mortal after all) but also in a figurative sense (quit drinking the water of this world and drink the water of salvation, the only water that offers eternal life and can quench that burning fire within you of frustration, sorrow and hopelessness).
In June of 2008 I stopped drinking from my own well. All that blood was making me sick. As I was baptized I came up through cool water into the open face of a brilliantly blue sky and that well within me? It ran clean once again. I'm a billion miles from perfect. I am a man of many wounds. But the water I drink now? It heals me.
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