LEAKING CISTERNS OR LIVING FOUNTAINS

For my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water – Jeremiah 2:13

“…Cisterns are mere holes in the ground, reservoirs for storing rainwater. In ancient times they were usually pear-shaped reservoirs with a small opening at the top. Most were small, but some were very large and took a long time and a lot of work to dig…

Picture yourself swinging a pick, digging from dawn to dusk, excavating the hard, unyielding ground. While others are playing golf, swimming, fishing, vacationing, gathering with family and friends, you stay on the job, working through the biting cold of winter and through the blazing heat of summer when the sun turns your cistern into a kiln.

After years of strenuous, demanding effort you finally achieve your purpose you complete the hole on which you’ve invested your best years. Then you step back and wait for your cistern to fill – and it leaks. There’s a crack or flaw in the tank; perhaps the stone is too porous or the lining is faulty and you discover what every one of your neighbors has found, or will find, that cisterns, no matter how well constructed, always leak.

“I’ll dig another cistern,” you say. “I’ll take my project back to the drawing board and draft a new, improved version. I’ll work harder, work longer, work somewhere else, make it work this time.”

But sooner or later reality sets in. It’s just a matter of time…We “come to the cisterns and find no water; (we) return with our vessels empty…We have followed emptiness…and we have become empty” (Jeremiah 14:3, 5).

…There’s a reason for that emptiness. God in His infinite love and wisdom has foiled us. He has seen to it that our endeavors fail to satisfy us because He loves us too much to let us go. He will deny us and thwart us until there is nothing left but God…

Perhaps you’re a cistern-digger, driven by soul-thirst. Only God can satisfy your heart. Everything else will deceive and disappoint.

But Jeremiah paints another picture: a “spring of living water” (Jeremiah 2:13), rising from hidden depths, pouring into our hearts, satisfying us even as it makes us thirst for more, always flowing in abundance, always accessible…

There is a river of God’s love flowing at your feet. Put down your pick and shovel. Stoop down and drink. “Whoever is thirsty, let him come, and whoever wishes, let him take the free gift of the water of life” (Revelation 22:17).”