The Water that Gushes Up
Even though I left my church in London in September to repatriate, I volunteered to continue writing Sunday school lessons for the children, since it is my absolute favorite thing to do! Plus, it makes me focus on the lectionary and pare each passage down to its essential elements. It's tempting to pour all of my seminary education into each lesson for four to eleven year olds, but I'm not sure that they'd appreciate the nuances between ontological and operational Christology. Nope, when writing lessons for kids I ask myself, 'What is the one nugget that I want them to remember?'
Today, I was working on a lesson about the Woman at the Well (John 4: 5-30). It's a strange one for several reasons: It is one of the few times that Jesus talks directly to a woman. It's a private conversation that somehow gets recorded. Jesus seems to be a fortune-teller, telling the woman all about her, perhaps 'shady', past. She is a foreigner, an outsider, but one of the first to recognize Jesus as the Messiah. But my nugget for the kids' is: God's love is our living water.
Water and water rights is a big concern these days, especially in drought stricken areas and as it relates to natural gas 'fracking'. Water is a limited and precious resource, absolutely essential for life. But Jesus offers the woman 'living water', an unlimited resource. 'The water I give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.' (John 4: 14b) God's living water in our lives never runs dry, never gets tainted. It is an unending source of love 'gushing up.'
But how do we get this living water? It seems that all the woman needed to do was say 'Give me a drink.' All she had to do was ask. It seems so simple. But asking is really quite hard. We need to be at the point where we realize that nothing in our lives, that we can provide ourselves, is satisfying us. And we spend so much time and money and energy seeking out those things that we think are going to satisfy - status, jobs, clothes, houses (and yes, I just bought a really cool house...), cars, sex, drugs, etc. But at some point, most of realize that those things aren't really filling us up. They don't really quench our thirst.
We are born with a God-shaped hole in our hearts. I don't know where this phrase first came from but it relates to a passage from the 17th century philosopher/theologian, Blaise Pascal, who said, “What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself.” - Pensées VII(425)
God's love, in the form of Jesus Christ, is the only thing that can fill our 'God-shaped hole' and stop us from going back to the well day after day. And God's love becomes that water that 'gushes up' in our lives. It multiplies and grows so that we can give it away in abundance and never run dry ourselves.
God of the living water, I am thirsty. Give me a drink. Amen.
Today, I was working on a lesson about the Woman at the Well (John 4: 5-30). It's a strange one for several reasons: It is one of the few times that Jesus talks directly to a woman. It's a private conversation that somehow gets recorded. Jesus seems to be a fortune-teller, telling the woman all about her, perhaps 'shady', past. She is a foreigner, an outsider, but one of the first to recognize Jesus as the Messiah. But my nugget for the kids' is: God's love is our living water.
Water and water rights is a big concern these days, especially in drought stricken areas and as it relates to natural gas 'fracking'. Water is a limited and precious resource, absolutely essential for life. But Jesus offers the woman 'living water', an unlimited resource. 'The water I give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.' (John 4: 14b) God's living water in our lives never runs dry, never gets tainted. It is an unending source of love 'gushing up.'
But how do we get this living water? It seems that all the woman needed to do was say 'Give me a drink.' All she had to do was ask. It seems so simple. But asking is really quite hard. We need to be at the point where we realize that nothing in our lives, that we can provide ourselves, is satisfying us. And we spend so much time and money and energy seeking out those things that we think are going to satisfy - status, jobs, clothes, houses (and yes, I just bought a really cool house...), cars, sex, drugs, etc. But at some point, most of realize that those things aren't really filling us up. They don't really quench our thirst.
We are born with a God-shaped hole in our hearts. I don't know where this phrase first came from but it relates to a passage from the 17th century philosopher/theologian, Blaise Pascal, who said, “What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself.” - Pensées VII(425)
God's love, in the form of Jesus Christ, is the only thing that can fill our 'God-shaped hole' and stop us from going back to the well day after day. And God's love becomes that water that 'gushes up' in our lives. It multiplies and grows so that we can give it away in abundance and never run dry ourselves.
God of the living water, I am thirsty. Give me a drink. Amen.
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