Article June 17, 2019 Issue

The well of Spirit

Elisabeth Groß

There’s an account in the Bible of Jesus speaking to a woman at a well in Samaria—the well being called Jacob’s well (see John 4). Jesus told this Samaritan woman, who we find out later was leading an immoral life, that those who drank from the water of the well would thirst again. What might Jesus have meant by this? Could he have been referring to the fact that water from this well couldn’t bring real satisfaction?

Symbolically, we might think of the well as representing material existence, comprised of toil, ephemeral pleasure, sorrow, sickness, and brief human happiness. When we drink from this well, that is, when we seek satisfaction from it, sooner or later we will thirst again, never finding or reaching lasting peace.

Jesus, knowing of the spiritual well, the inexhaustible, eternal spring of God’s love, went on to say: “But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.” Clearly touched by Jesus’ words, the woman responds: “Sir, give me this water, that I thirst not, neither come hither to draw.”

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