“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)
The people
described by the prophet Jeremiah in this verse were fools, twice over. To turn
your back on a fountain of waters (in this case, “living waters”) for the risk
of a man-made, artificial tank or reservoir is to show yourself to be lacking
in good judgment…especially when it turns out the cisterns are broken. In a
case like this, a man or woman could spend a great deal of his or her life thirsty,
perhaps even dying of it.
Now, here’s the
real clincher: the fountain in this verse is God Himself (“…they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters…”).
Still, who of us has not seen (or experienced) this very thing? Trading peace
with God and purpose of life for turmoil, stress, and aimlessness, just to do
things our own way—dig our own wells, if you will. We should know that any
self-devised plan for our lives that turns away from Biblical precepts in favor
of so-called “popular wisdom” will leave us high and dry every time. The mark of
such a man or woman (saved or lost) is a broken
life, a broken heart, broken promises, and broken relationships.
Only the water
that Jesus offered the Samaritan woman in John four possesses qualities capable
of quenching eternal, internal
thirst. Anything else—philosophy, psychology, self-help, positive thinking,
“visualization,” mood-elevating drugs, etc.—are all simply broken cisterns, and
when push comes to shove, they just won’t hold water. It goes without saying
that a wise individual will leave such unreliable sources for the God, the Fountain
of Living Water; because only a fool would choose bottled water when there is
an artesian well at your disposal.
Can you say
with the Psalmist, “For with thee is the
fountain of life…” and “…all my
springs are in thee”? (Psalm 36:9; 87:7)
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