The Spring

A few days after my family moved into a school bus in bottomland in central Illinois, my dad and I walked into the hills to explore the land. “Bert, see that spring?” he said as he pointed at a wall of earth covered with green moss and vines.

 

I had no idea what he was talking about and asked, “Where?”

“Here,” he touched a particularly dark area on the wall and I saw water coming from the hill. Pressing the side of his cupped hand below the spring, he collected water in his palm and drank from it like a faucet. With a deep sigh, he stepped aside and said, “Here you try it.”

 

“No. It’s dirty.” He laughed at my timidity and explained how the earth filtered the water of what I called dirt. I still refused. Time passed as we explored deeper and deeper into the woods every day, and my thirst sent me in search of water. I learned where to find springs and drank my fill of the clear, cold water.

 

After I accepted Jesus as my Savior, I learned that the cool water of a hillside spring would only quench my physical thirst for a time. The living water that Jesus gives comes from the Holy Spirit. It bubbles up and overflows from within my soul.

 

“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” (John 4:13-14 NIV).

 

“On the last and greatest day of the festival, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, ‘Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.’” (John 7:37-38 NIV).

 

In Christian Love,

Berta