Over this past week, we experienced what it’s like to have no running water for 5 consecutive days.
No showers, no way to wash dishes, no flushing toilets, and the rationing of drinking water.
The lines to buy water at the supermarket wrapped all the way around outskirts of the store, and the prices were inflated enormously. A 2 liter normally priced at 2.50 soles was being sold for 15 soles.
Times were rough, and a little scary, but we had youth group in the midst of it.
It was there that the pastor said something incredibly impactful.
What good is soap if you don’t have water?
We can have all the things the world says are valuable – clothes, a house, a booming career, a spouse, kids, car etc. but if we don’t have Christ, then those things are useless.
Just like we can have dish soap, color-stay shampoo, coffee grounds, and empty ice trays, none of those can be used without water.
John 4:10 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.”
How easy is it to buy the flashy things – like organic fair-trade coffee, and handmade soap, but then find they are useless when there is no water to be found.
It’s the same with Christ. It’s so easy to work hard to get ahead in our career, buy new cars, get a bigger house, but without Christ at the center those things are meaningless.
So I’ve been challenged this last week, to put God in the center, to make sure that I have the Living Water and not just the soap- let me challenge you to do the same.
