URC Daily Devotion 29 May 2026

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29 May 2026
When the Water Connects
 

John 4: 6-15

Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon. A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, ‘Give me a drink’.  (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, ‘How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?’ (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.)  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.’  The woman said to him, ‘Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water?  Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?’  Jesus said to her, ‘Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again,  but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.’  The woman said to him, ‘Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.’

Reflection

It was about noon, and the heat lay heavy on the ground. A woman came to the well, carrying her jar and her silence. Jesus sat nearby, tired from the road, and asked for a drink. It was a small moment, almost ordinary, yet something sacred began there. It was the meeting of two kinds of thirst.

They spoke about water. Her hands knew its cool weight and the rhythm of drawing it up from the deep. He spoke of something that rose within, a life that could not run dry. One water came from the earth, the other from the Spirit. Both were real, both were needed. Without one, the body weakens. Without the other, the soul does too.

At that well, the two waters met. The water she offered and the water she received belonged to the same grace. The exchange was not one-way. He was refreshed by her kindness, and she was restored by his presence. It was no longer about who gave or who received. It was about the life that passed between them.

We often live as if body and spirit belong to different worlds. Yet they are always entwined. The same water that cools the tongue can open the heart. The same act that meets a need can awaken grace. Faith does not escape. It is attention, a willingness to see how God breathes through both.

When the woman returned to her town, she left her jar behind. Perhaps she no longer needed it, for what she had found could not be contained. The well was no longer only a place of drawing water. It had become a place of meeting, where grace had passed between two lives. And in that meeting, both were changed.

Prayer

God of living water,
You meet us in every thirst.
You sit beside our wells and wait for our words.
Teach us to notice the grace that moves between us,
in every cup shared, in every story told.
Let our lives become places of meeting,
where Your love flows freely and both giver and receiver are renewed.
Amen.

Today’s writer

The Revd Dr Seoyoung Kim is a Lecturer in Applied Theology at the Belfast School of Theology and a Central Committee member of the World Council of Churches.

New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.