Water towers are part of the trademarks of towns. They are readily identifiable and usually decorated to reflect the local community. They are necessary to municipal water systems. They store water for variable demand and are necessary to the management of water supplies.
“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.
Jeremiah 2:13 (NIV)
Water is our life line. We cannot survive without it. Jesus claimed to be the source of living water, a source that always is a continuous, abundant flow.
What is this passage in Jeremiah saying? We are at work in our own world. We have jobs, an economy, and a political structure. We use these things to mitigate both the good and the bad in our world, which we should. However, there is a limit to what we can provide, fix, and control. He is addressing our propensity to control our lives and rely on ourselves. We are building an unreliable resource system. We can try to be our own source. We can dig cisterns to store our supply. We can store up the things we want and the things that make us feel secure. We think we will be safe. The problem we face is that anything we create and the mechanisms we use to preserve our “water” is only a substitute for the real thing, a functioning well. Jeremiah is saying that anything we gain and store that is a substitute for God will leak out. It is a broken system. We will be faced with constantly monitoring and refilling our reserve. It is not so with God. He is a fountain. He is a fresh spring that never runs dry, never needs decontaminated, or never needs replenishing. He is the replenisher and He has promised us abundant life if we will source our life from Him instead of broken, leaky substitutes.
Lord,
Forgive me for accepting a substitute for You. I am at the end of my provision. I can not plug the leaks fast enough. Change the water source I am tapped in to. Disconnect me from my cistern and connect me to You, living water.
Amen