if you go out into a desert you'll see
why it's one of the most deadly
uninhabitable places on the planet it's
dry and where there's no water there's
no life this is the picture that we get
on page 2 of Genesis the story begins
with a dry and desolate wilderness but
God provides a spring in the desert that
becomes a source of life for plants and
animals and that's where God brings
together a man and a woman so that
humanity can flourish and spread the
life of the garden exactly and that
garden spring becomes a river that flows
out to water the entire world and there
can be enough for everyone it's all a
gift from God and this is great humans
in a lush garden but as it turns out
they find a way to ruin it right despite
all of this water that God's provided
it's like they still have a drought deep
inside of them
this is an image of the human condition
how we're always thirsty for more but
more of what well in this story the
humans want more wisdom to create more
security and more control on their own
terms and tragically it only leaves them
more thirsty and suspicious of each
other
and so they end up back in the
wilderness the humans have lost access
to the water of life and because of that
they can't spread God's life into the
world
and so God needs to rescue them from the
wilderness yeah like in the story of
Jacob his selfish scheming ruined his
family relationships so he has to run
from his problems out into the
wilderness but there he finds a well and
he meets a woman and this is like Eden a
man and a woman together by a source of
water right and then through Jacob God
creates the family of Israel and he
invites them to share in his own life so
that they can be his partners and
spreading that life to others and
sometimes they do this but ultimately
they struggle with the same drought of
the soul thirsting for more power and
more can
scroll and it leads them down a path of
violence and self ruin and so they find
themselves in a new wilderness captive
to other nations all this effort to
quinces her own thirst on our own terms
it's killing us
yeah the biblical prophet Ezekiel
described Israel in exile as a pile of
dry bones scattered in the desert valley
but he said one day God will pour out
his own life presence his spirit to
water the land to create a new Eden and
new kinds of humans people who can
spread God's life to others
exactly and so this brings us to the
story of Jesus right and there's a story
about Jesus it goes to a well that Jacob
knew stone and just like in Jacobs story
Jesus meets a woman and he tells this
woman that no matter how much water she
drinks from this well she'll always
thirst for more then he offers water
that could quench her thirst forever
he's not talking about the well water
know what he's talking about is God's
own life that comes through him to us to
satisfy our deepest thirsts this is why
later on Jesus says let anyone who's
thirsty come to me and drink this is
cool but it's also a strange image
drinking from a person totally and it's
connected to another strange image we
find in the story of Jesus's death on
the cross a Roman soldier thrusts a
spear and Jesus side and there's blood
but also all this water flows out yes
it's an image showing how Jesus's death
is the fountain of life from him God's
own love that would die for his enemies
flows down and out into the world after
Jesus was raised from the dead were told
that he sends the spirit into his
followers yes to fill them up with the
God's own life this is why the Apostle
Paul said that when we join the current
of God's Spirit the fruit of Eden starts
growing in us love and joy patience and
kindness gentleness and self-control
people like that can create beautiful
things in the world that bring life to
others yes like little streams of God's
life that can come together and point
forward to the beautiful scene that we
find on the last page of the Bible
there's a new river of life yes it's
flowing out from God and into a renewed
creation bringing life to all wherever
it goes