Broken Cisterns

“We dig broken cisterns and sip on water that leaks out and runs dry.” Lysa TerKeurst

Lysa TerKeurst gave a sermon about the Samaritan woman. It is no surprise that this is one of my favorite Bible stories. In this parable found in John 4, Jesus refers to himself as the “Living Water.” He tells of how she and her people draw from the wrong water source. He explains that they will continue to have to come to the well-spring to gather water because their thirst will never fade. Only the Living Water can truly quench her thirst. This Living Water sustains.

Back in the day of the Samaritan woman, people created cisterns in the ground to gather and store water. They were made out of limestone. The limestone had to be plastered in order to hold the water so it wouldn’t leak. If there was one crack in the plaster, the water would seep out running the cistern dry.

I love Lysa’s analogy. What cisterns are we building in order to try and quench our thirst? We continue to go to our broken cisterns to quench our thirst when Jesus, the Living Water, is waiting to satisfy.

We get thirsty for something. We long for healing or try to fill some kind of void.

We head to our cistern scooping up the water with our hands only to find that it has run dry.

Our cisterns are broken.

Only Jesus can satisfy. He is the Living Water.

We continue to try and draw water from our broken cisterns because it seems easy; it feels safe. We know that cistern. We feel like we have control because it is our cistern. We dig and we scrape searching to quench our thirst continuously trying to draw from a broken and dry cistern.

Jesus is there. He is our cistern and his water never runs dry. He wants to fill us and quench our thirst. We just have to let him. We have to allow him to be our Living Water. We need to draw from him even when we cannot see. We need to believe that he is the only one that can fill our voids; fill our souls.

He is the Living Water.

…but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life. John 4:14

Love & Blessings,

Meg