"Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again; but whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst." The woman at the well was longing for something that no one had been able to give her. She had been married to five different men and was now with a sixth. This chain of relationships had apparently not fulfilled her. She was continually looking for something (someONE) new to satisfy her longing. Then, she encountered Jesus. He promised her a kind of satisfaction that would not fade away, and she was intrigued. "Sir, give me this water, so that I may not be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water."
The woman kept coming to the same "well" time after time. She kept trying to find her happiness through the various men in her life. But time after time, it didn't work out. Here now, she finally finds the one man who CAN offer her true, unending, eternal happiness: the Messiah. "I am he, the one speaking with you."
Jesus is the One. He is the One we have been waiting for, searching for, longing for. Even though we may not have known it, our restlessness and our emptiness have been leading us to him. He alone can satisfy our desire for contentment that doesn't end, for joy that trumps the sorrows of life, and for the peace that surpasses understanding. We, for our part, must stop looking to satisfy our thirst at the wrong well. We must relinquish our worldly water and begin to drink of the "living water" that comes when we "worship the Father in Spirit and truth." This requires real change in our lives. For the woman, it meant that she "left her water jar." Today, let us each pause to identify what it is that WE must leave behind.