Sweet waters

 

My mother’s dad’s mother, my great-granny Epperly, had a farm on Flattop Mountain in West Virginia.  She had an old wooden clapboard two story house with a porch on three sides.  At each corner was a rain barrel that collected rainwater from the roof.  That’s because it was a long walk to and from the spring.  And it was down a steep path.  The spring water was used for drinking and cooking, and the rainwater was used for everything else.  The rain barrels were wooden and had a musty smell about them.  We were never to play in the rain barrels, partly because they needed to be kept clean and partly because they were dangerous.  If a child tipped in head-first, they couldn’t get out and would drown.  But the clean, fresh spring water was great for drinking and well worth the trip.  God said in Jeremiah 2:13, “For my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.”  Why would anyone forsake clean, fresh water for old, musty cistern water?!  It is because of the allurement of sin.  Hey, forsake wickedness and return to the God of your salvation.  Get right with God … and live.  Drink of those sweet, living waters mentioned in John 4.