Week 42: Come Thou Fount (Above All Else)

⁷ A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” ⁸ (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) ⁹ The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) ¹⁰ Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” ¹¹ The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? ¹² Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.” ¹³ Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, ¹⁴ but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” ¹⁵ The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”

John 4: 7-15 (ESV)

Do you crave satisfaction? If you do, you are not alone. It seems that humans are created to be satisfied. We look for satisfaction spiritually and physically. Some humans are hedonistic, and only pleasures found in food, drink, drugs, sex, pornography, and other excesses, satisfy them. Evidently, this is not glorifying to God, nor good for the soul!

In contrast, some religions preach a path to non-satisfaction. Traditional Buddhism, for example, preaches that the end goal and highest soteriological status in life is to achieve nothingness. Only then can you find satisfaction: in a state of nothingness or release. This way of thinking seems to hold more appeal, but can the end goal of life truly be nothingness?

Praise the Lord because humans are intended to find satisfaction. We are created to be fulfilled! However, our fulfillment is not found in physical pleasures, nor in nothingness, nor in ambiguous forms of self-help. We are meant to be fulfilled in Christ, who offers the living waters that alone can satisfy.

So yes, we are supposed to crave satisfaction! We crave satisfaction because we are created to find Christ. We are not supposed to detach ourselves from our spiritual and physical needs, nor are we to indulge in them. We are intended to be satisfied by the living waters of Christ. In Him we find life. In Him we find fulfillment. In Him we find satisfaction.

Like rivers that are restless until they meet the ocean, our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Christ. (paraphrase of Augustine’s Confessions.)