When my children were around 2 years old, they would come to me with their arms reaching up and I would hear them say, “hold you, hold you”. They wanted me to pick them up and hold them but the misuse of the words of ‘hold you’ were so precious to a mother’s ear. A child’s transparent need and desire for holding and healing speak to me. Children know their needs and do not hold back in expressing them. They are not afraid to be honest and open.
In John 4, the Samaritan woman has a conversation with Jesus about needs, honesty, and openness. They meet at a well for water.
Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water."
"Sir," the woman said, "you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Jesus answered, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life." The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water so that I won't get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water."
With each year that passes in my life, I’ve noticed that I’ve become comfortable. My life and my surroundings are comfortable. Let’s count the ways we’re comfortable: good jobs, good friends, good church, food to eat, attend church at least weekly, give charitably, happy marriage, great kids, great dog, family is fine. All of those are the outward appearances that make up my Samaritan woman look.
But yet, I know and God knows that the well inside me is so very deep…the well of pain, of disappointment, of failure, of lost dreams, of lost hope, of lost love. There is so much heartache in this earthly life.
Even in acknowledging those places, I find that often the world swirls around me so quickly that I forget my great need of a Saviour. I actually start living like I believe the comforts in my life will save me. Or I actually find myself believing that I’m really OK. Like the Samaritan woman, we continue our daily lives that are filled with obligations and activities. We go through the motions all the while the wells inside us are so very deep.
We are a broken people. We are a people in need of a Saviour. The need to know and be known is inside each of us…the need, the desire to hold and to be held by our Saviour. Hold you, we cry.
