⁷ A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” ⁸ (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) ⁹ The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) ¹⁰ Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” ¹¹ The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? ¹² Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.” ¹³ Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, ¹⁴ but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” ¹⁵ The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”

Jesus promised the Samaritan woman that he has living water that if she drank it, she would never thirst again. The woman could only think in very tangible, physical terms. She was not thinking in spiritual terms at all. That should not surprise us. Most of us think more in practical, physical terms than we think about things from a spiritual perspective. All the woman could think about was never have to be physically thirsty again and never having to draw water from the well again.

But Jesus knew that she had a deeper thirst. There was an emotional and spiritual thirst in her life. It manifested itself in the multiple relationships she had with men. She was trying to fill some deep emotional need with physical relationships and it wasn’t working. Jesus was offering to quench her spiritual thirst and in the process heal her emotional needs as well.

So often we try to fill the spiritual void in our lives that exists because we are estranged from God. We try to fill it in ways that promise much but deliver little. In fact they usually end up making things worse. That was certainly that case with this woman. She was an outcast on several levels because she was trying to fill he need for love and acceptance in was that only destroyed her relationships.

What Jesus was promising to do for her was heal her spiritual brokenness and give her the hope and joy of a relationship with God that would satisfy her deepest longings. Not only did he promise a changed life now, but he promised that such a life would extend on into eternity. How sad is it that we recognize that something is not right in our lives and when we try solutions of our own design we only make it worse. How glorious is it that Jesus comes to us, even in our most broken moments and offers a life beyond our wildest dreams and he offers it for free.