I like
to start my days with a kick. So every morning, I pour myself a large cup of
tea and let it cool to drinking temperature as I check my e-mail. Imagine my
frustration, when I reached for my cup only to find it completely empty and the
tablecloth saturated with tea. The cup had a crack in it I didn’t see.

As I
threw it away, I was reminded of a passage in Jeremiah where God rebukes his
people for trading a relationship with him for empty dreams.  He said, “My
people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living
water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold
water.” (Jer. 2:13)

We
don’t use a lot of cisterns in the United States anymore, but for many years
people relied on these reservoirs to hold water for their drinking, bathing,
cooking and cleaning.  If a cistern
broke, it was a catastrophe.

God
used this illustration to help us understand that life without him is like
living with a broken cistern – hopeless. Just as we can’t live without water,
we can’t live without God. And the good news is, we don’t have to.

Christ
tells us in John 4: “Everyone who drinks
of this water will be thirsty again. But whoever drinks the water I give them
will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring
of water welling up to eternal life.” (John 4:13)

Like a
broken cistern, our lives are full of holes. We try all kinds of methods to
patch those holes and to give our lives meaning, but we’re still left empty
because we don’t have what really matters – a relationship with the one who
loves us, giving us himself through the Son, filling us with the Spirit as we
receive him.

When
we are in a personal and meaningful relationship with God, we’re filled with
living water, and, spiritually, we’ll never have to thirst again.

I’m
Joseph Tkach, Speaking of LIFE.