Like a fish out of water...

My Monday morning walk took a bizarre turn this week when a friend and I happened upon--of all things--a fish on the sidewalk near my home.  

We figured either Sharknado was 'bout to happen or a large bird had dropped it mid-flight.  At 1pm that afternoon the fish was still on the sidewalk and, we discovered, still alive!  Feeling slightly guilty for having let the poor thing suffer so long, Blake and I filled a bucket with water and transported it to a nearby creek where it swam away.

 

(He's a cute little wildlife conservationist, isn't he??)

That fish laid on the sidewalk for 5 hours, still and seemingly lifeless.  There's no telling how far down it fell when it landed there.  But you should have seen it when we dropped it in the water!  Its gills moved and fins fluttered.  It's head searched for the direction of the current and righted immediately.  That fish found life again.

In the book of John it's recorded that Jesus meets a Samaritan woman at a well and offers her living water.  

"Now he had to go through Samaria. So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon. When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?”  The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.” “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?” Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks 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.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”  John 4:4-15

Y'all, there are so many souls living in a fish-out-of-water state everyday.  If I'm honest even I find myself there on a pretty regular basis, where I am half-full of the life God wants for me and sorely out of place.  But friends, there is living water that can revive us the way the creek near my house revived that fish.  There is a Savior that not only quenches our thirst, but rejuvenates us completely, who removes us from the dry, cold ground and sets us free to swim again.

The most beautiful part of this passage in John is how Jesus goes on in this conversation to name this woman's sin.  He asks her to go and bring her husband back to him, knowing that she is not married, and she confesses the truth to him (verses 15-18).  At first glance maybe it looks like Jesus is being unkind, taunting her with a promise and then reminding her of her past.  But as the account continues "The woman said, "I know that Messiah (called Christ) is coming. When he comes he will explain everything to us."  Then Jesus declared, "I--the one speaking to you--I am He."  (verses 25-26)

Here Jesus declares who He is.  Not a prophet with limited wisdom or vision, but the One True God who sees her and knows her and offers her life.  In those times no man would have spoken so freely with a woman, let alone a Samaritan woman.  But the life that Christ offers is not limited by world says we can do, or what society says we deserve.  And her encounter with Jesus would not only change the course of her own life, but the lives of many more because of her testimony (verse 39).

Christ sees you.  He sees your struggle.  Your past.  Your present frustrations.  And He comes to you anyway.  Because the life He wants for you--for any of us--is not cold.  It is not misplaced.  It is not devoid of hope.  It is, rather, eternal.  And it is not just rescue, but it is rebirth.  For you, and for all those who will hear the Good Word He has put into your life.  

So swim, friends.  Swim.

XOXO....Kelly