Each Thursday morning a small group of friends meet to read two things: 1) prayers that help us examine our hearts and 2) a gospel reading. This morning’s reading came from John 4 – the story of Jesus’ encounter with the woman at the well.

In this story there are two contrasting images. One image comes from the physical gathering place where Jesus encounters the woman: the well. The other image comes from Jesus’ offer to her of a ‘spring of water welling up to eternal life.’

A well and a spring. We spent time sitting with these contrasting images.

A well. A controlled environment. You approach it with your bucket. You put the bucket down into the depths of the well. You draw out as much as you want. You go home. You return as needed.

A spring. Gushing. Overflowing. Uncontrolled. Abundant. Messy. Refreshing.

The well is described by the woman. The offer of Jesus is the spring.

Our traditional spirituality, understanding, and experience of God can look much like a well. It is something we know we need – and we approach it as needed. Then we go about our daily business, returning when we need it again. This type of spirituality lies completely within our control. We can have as much or as little as we want. I believe, in God’s grace, he will meet us at this well, but each time we meet him at the well we are invited to a different way of being. We are invited to a spring.

This spring, Jesus says, lives within us. It does not depend on place. We carry around this gushing, overflowing, uncontrolable abundant, sometimes messy but always refreshing life of God. We cannot control it. We can only be consumed by it. It spills out of us because it is uncontainable.

But most of us don’t want an uncontainable, uncontrolable God. We actually want the well. We want our controlled environments. The inate spiritual side in each one of us wants to taste God’s life – just not be consumed by it, because being consumed means losing control. And we love control. Therefore, we prefer the well.

Each trip to the well we meet God, and each time we go to the well we are invited by God to experience the spring. While we may be satisfied with our experience of the well, God is never satisfied with our experience of the well. He knows the spring is much better. It’s what we were created to experience. It’s how we were created to live.

I think God’s hope is that someday we’ll become weary of the well – tired of having to take a break from our ‘real’ life to go to the well to get our fill of ‘spiritual’ life. I think his hope is that we will get tired of the meagerness of our efforts to control the reality of God in our lives, and receive his invitation to experience the abundance of His life in the spring.