In today's first reading, Exodus 17: 3-7, the people grumble against Moses for bringing them out of Egypt. "Was it," they asked, "just to have us die here of thirst with our children and our livestock?" The people were so angry that Moses was afraid that they would stone him to death. God instructs Moses to go "over there in front of the people, along with some of the elders of Israel, holding in your hand, as you go, the staff with which you struck the river. I will be standing there in front of you on the rock in Horeb. Strike the rock, and the water will flow from it for the [people to drink."
God assures Moses that He "will be standing there in front of you on the rock of Horeb." God also stands in front of us, walks beside and behind us, and hovers above and below us. God surround us on all sides, giving us Living Water to quench our thirst, as Jesus tells the Samaritan woman in today's Gospel, John 4: 5-42. She comes to the well at noon, the hottest time of the day, to draw water from the well and meets Jesus. He tells her that He is Living Water and those who drink of this Water shall never thirst.Having met Jesus and been ministered to by Him, she leaves her bucket at the well and returns to her hometown, Samaria, to tell her people that she found the Messiah. Her country men and women rush to see Jesus for themselves and believe.
This woman tells Jesus that she does not have a husband. Jesus responds: Your current husband in fact is not your husband. You have had five husbands. Was this woman trying to quench her thirst in going from one husband to another and another and another, never being satisfied until she met Jesus? She leaves Jesus as a believer and an evangelist! Each one of us, no matter what our past, are important in Jesus' eyes to be sent forth to evangelize, to spread the faith, to be an instrument of grace, to bring people to Jesus, the only one who can truly quench people's thirst!
Wearily at times, and perhaps many times, we attempt to quench our thirst in things, events and people who are unable to satisfy. Why? Because within us is an insatiable thirst for God, for things of the spirit, and no thing or event or person here on earth is capable of relieving the thirst that originates in our spirit self. Only God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit can do that.
Am I, are you, going to the wrong sources to quench the thirst that originates deep within us, that is, from our spirit self or God-self? Are we avoiding sources that quench this thirst: prayer, meditation, solitude, spiritual reading, reflection on the Scriptures, serving others in love, responding to unmet need of a person who needs someone to talk to, to confide in, to offer compassion and understanding? Are we running from one relationship to another and another and another or engaging in other addictive behaviors that do not satisfy our insatiable thirst for God and the Divine?
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