In recent years my wife and I have worked with a large village in Kenya. The word village is really misnomer as the village is really a small city with nearly 20,000 people surrounding the center of the town. As it is with many villages in Africa, water is highly prized and wells are actually fought over (in terms of placement and location).
Christ's statement as to His status as the living water is a metaphor many of us in the West have highly spiritualized. In Africa, living water is a premium. Much of the water they have access to is full of bacteria and disease that either makes one tremendously ill or could at some point kill you. What a strange phenomenon that the very water your body thirsts for could actually kill you if it is not living water. Living in this sense would be considered life giving rather than death giving.
We in the Sates take water for granted. We do not need to think about what might come from quenching our thirst. We can drink up without fear. Ironically our access to unlimited sources of water is in some ways another metaphor for the over abundance we have in Western societies. We no longer grasp the conditions that many face throughout the world and in that lack of awareness a strange thing happens to the very water we drink. It begins to bring small doses of bacteria that begin to saturate our soul. These small organisms enter our soul and slowly over time alter the very way our bodies and souls engage the world.
Taking this metaphor further I offer up this scenario. Is it possible that because we take one of life’s most vital life sources for granted, we then take the provider of this gift for granted? What is the by-product of taking God for granted and how did we get here?
As I enter full-fledged middle age I find that discovering spiritual wells is getting harder and harder. Ironically it is not due to may lack of thirst but my awareness as to how I hunt for water. My water dowser (a term people in the backwoods use for one looking for a place to dig a well), has been taken for granted due to the culture in which I thirst. I have dug my well deep into this world and now my soul thirsts for water of a certain kind. My tongue thirsts for increase and growth. I have lived my life from an economic perspective that says I can sell the water that is a gift. My life is available to the highest bidder. This has all been unwitting as I did not know the God of success was enshrined in my heart, in my thirst. I discovered the source of my thirst when I began to discover that I saw myself through this lens of worth, merit and accomplishment. I am what I do. I am what I earn. I am where I live. I am what I have. I am who I know and I know people of power and prestige.
Of late my thirst has begun to change and the very refreshment my soul used to find refreshing now has a strange and even dis-settling taste. I have become to see that my ability to create wealth for myself and others is an elixir that no longer washes over my soul with any sense of refreshment. As I enter middle age I begin to see that life in indeed filled with mortality and limitation and that my thirst for unlimited access to water is indeed not the way the universe works. The water my soul has taken for granted is a myth. I can drink of this water but it is really sugary soda pop or some saccharine version of living water. My tongue did not know the difference but now my heart has begun to inform my bodily appetites and my thirst is changing. I can no longer satiate my thirst with liquids that indeed are filled with salt thus making my thirst a never ending retuning to the very things that are making my thirst unquenchable.
Lately I think I heard the Spirit say, “Dig here.” In my heart I am thinking, “What, dig here? There is no water to be found in this location.” As I reluctantly stopped my incessant search for water at the wrong well I began to discover something about the water the Spirit offers. His water is not just for me. He wants to build wells for the village. He desires that this water be accessible to anyone - the just and the unjust. He says the rain falls on all. He seems indiscriminant as to how He offers us this living water. Now my thirst is quenched in the shift in my intentionality as to my digging. Whereas in the past I may have dug for myself, for my own edification, my own personal wealth and thirst, now I have begun to dig with & for others. We are digging. We are dowsing together. We stop and pause and ask corporately, "Is there water here?”We acknowledge together our need of this living water. We are all thirsty beyond our ability to attain anything in this life. The thirst, the real deep down thirst comes in our common humanity. When we begin to see that under our clothes, past our accomplishments, past our marks we have made in this world, we are all the same. This search for water is a communal search and the place of the well must serve many. It is not for my personal private thirst.
I thirst along with others. I dig along with others. I am digging the well along with others. In Africa many of the wells get vandalized and then become inoperable. Our spiritual wells in the West get vandalized as well through our ignoring their maintenance and oversight. When we dig a well for the thirst of others we create a space in this world where people gather. We place the well in a community, hopefully at the center of town; we gather together and admit our thirst for living water. We admit who we are and why we were attempting to build our private little wells that allowed us to have access to water any time we wanted. In Africa, the rich often close off access to water wells to the poor for obvious reasons. They do not want to identity with these people. Even though the thirst is the same and in sense water is a gift from the creator, wealthy people close off the source of water and put up fences around the well.
We at Godmen want to offer access to the well to anyone and all. We want to coalesce our searching for water in isolation and bring the process under the community and make it a search together. Help us this day to be a good dowser. Help us as a community of men to be a place were people know they can get their deepest thirst quenched. Help us God dig deep into You for the sake of one another.
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