Living Water

I stare out the window before daybreak, eyes searching for the first hint of light on the horizon.  I contemplate the dream I had last night.

There was a heart…broken in half and filling up with water.  As the water filled up the crevices, it began to overflow profusely.  The water ran faster and spilled out and over the bowl-shaped, half empty heart and into…the soul.

The outpouring of water into a broken heart fills up an empty soul.

This very odd, crazy dream seemed everything but.  It seemed so very real.

As I sit and contemplate, one eye on the horizon and the other on my keyboard, it reminds of the Samaritan woman at the well.

She sits by the source of life…thirsty.  As she works, her mind must have wandered to her life circumstances.  A wandering woman, void of a home.

He comes.

He comes, a Jewish man, shows the Samaritan woman love and reveals Himself to her.

And as He speaks, the river of living water rushes forth and fills her half empty heart.  The heart that has been rotting away for years is healed by a Jewish teacher…sitter by the well…comrade of thieves…Savior of the world.  And her soul is quenched.

I sit, wait for God’s majesty to fill the sky and feel like the Samaritan woman.

My heart is half full…battered and broken as I struggle to thrive in a fallen world.  I sit by the well…thirsty.  It’s quiet and I wait for the glow to fill the sky and cleanse my heart.  Beauty…Jesus manifest.  I wait.

This is where I am made whole.

Before you can be made whole, you must be broken.

The truth pierces the quiet and I flinch.  I know its truth.

Before Jesus could climb out of an empty tomb, He had to hang on the cross.  Bruised. Beaten.  Nailed.  Bloody.  Broken.

Before my soul can become nourished with living water.  Before my heart can be made whole.  Before my I can live a grace-filled life before my children.   I must allow myself to be broken.

This means admitting I don’t have it all together.  This means allowing messes to invade my perfect plan.   It means surviving…thriving…in the chaos that is life.  And allowing my heart to be broken, battered and torn in the process.

Then…and only then…can we truly be made whole.

When we allow our hearts to be broken for the sake of servanthood…for the sake of being transformed...this is the place Jesus dwells.  Waiting to mend us.  Waiting to pour living water into our hearts and watch it spill over into our souls.  In the quiet places of our lives…the torrents of the world gushing through us…this is where we find life.

The sun rises.