Living water (2) - All The Good Seed Daily Devotionals for 2026

A woman of Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, Give me a drink. The woman of Samaria said to him, How is it that you, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman? For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans. Jesus answered and said to her, If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, Give me a drink, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.
John 4:7-10.

Living water (2)
A woman from the region approached the lonely traveller by the well. Why didn't she fetch water from the spring at Sychar, but rather from the more distant Jacob's well? Might she have expected some particular effect from its water owing to the religious tradition it had? The woman was surrounded by many inexplicable mysteries. What the Word of God tells us, however, is that with her needs, questions and troubles she also stands for us and our needs.

At that well a totally unexpected break with a taboo occurred: the weary Jewish traveller asked the despised Samaritan woman to draw water from the well for Him. Her reserve disappeared giving way to trust, but she expressed her astonishment. Jesus then spoke not of His own thirst, but of the thirst He had discovered in her heart, a marked, unquenched thirst for "living water".

The Samaritan woman did not know "the gift of God"; she did not realise that in His essence God is not a demanding God, but one who gives. Nor did she know the Son of God with whom she was speaking. Otherwise she would have asked Him and come to Him at the outset with her troubles and expectations.

(to be continued on Friday)

Today's reading: Jeremiah 26:1-24 · Romans 2:17-29