Third Week of Lent - February 24,
2008
John 4: 5-42
The
Living Water of God's Love
Highlighted Verses:
John 4:5-16 (NRSV)
So he came to a Samaritan city called
Sychar, near the plot of
ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6Jacob’s well was
there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It
was
about noon. 7A Samaritan woman came to draw water,
and Jesus said to
her, “Give me a drink.” 8(His disciples had gone to the city to
buy
food.) 9The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is
it that you, a Jew,
ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in
common
with Samaritans.) 10Jesus 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.” 11The woman
said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do
you get
that living water? 12Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob,
who
gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” 13Jesus
said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14but
those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be
thirsty. The
water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up
to
eternal life.” 15The woman said to him, “Sir, give me
this water, so
that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”
Raise
your hand if you ever been
really, really thirsty.
What
do you like to drink when you're thirsty?
I
like to drink lots of different things, but when I'm really, really thirsty I like to drink
water. And our bodies need
water, did you know that? Our bodies are filled with of water, and
without
it we couldn’t live – and so we have
to keep drinking every day, don’t we? It helps to keep us healthy.
Wouldn’t it be great if we never
got thirsty? What if there was special water that we could drink once
and it would took
care of us forever?
Well in this week’s Gospel story, Jesus is taking a long walk – and guess what happens? He gets thirsty. So he stops by a well and asks a woman there if she will help him get a drink. And while they’re talking he tells her about how God’s love is sort of like water.
Now he doesn’t mean real water, that we drink. He's talking about that special water I was wishing for. Jesus calls it “living water” – because we need it, and it fills us up and like that special water, once we have God’s love, we always have it. It lasts forever and we never need to go looking for more.
So this week, we’re going to ask God to fill us up with his love. Will you pray with me?
Dear
God,
We are
thirsty. Not for the water that we drink, but for the special living water that comes from your love.
Please fill us up and watch over us always. Amen
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2008 - The Children's
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