General News
18 January, 2026
In good faith
Summer 2026, and how ironic it seems that, as we enter another year, Australia is experiencing severe floods in the north and extreme heat days and fires in the south.
Too much water in one area and not enough in the other.
How good would it be to have a pipeline to share excess water and bring life where it is needed?
Water is necessary for all forms of life, and without it, we perish.
Whether it be for the earth and its plants, the animals or humans, we need water and cannot survive without it.
Water is used so much in everyday life, in every area of human need.
Essential for survival, these days we carry water bottles with us; years ago, the Farmers had hessian water bags that hung from the ute's grill or wherever, and when thirsty, they had a draught of warm, possibly dusty, stale water.
Or what about the early Pioneers, who must have been so thirsty at times and had limited places to source water?
And First Nations people who wandered, trying to source water as they travelled.
But thirst for water isn’t just literal; people thirst for all sorts of things, some essential, some not so.
Thirst for love, acceptance, healing, wholeness, peace, strength, money, power, forgiveness, reconciliation, or whatever it might be.
In the gospel of John, Chapter 4, Jesus meets a woman from Samaria.
While living next to each other, Samaritans were from another culture and essentially enemies of the Jews.
In this encounter, one of the longest recorded conversations of Jesus in the gospels, Jesus crosses cultural and religious boundaries to speak with her; firstly, she is a woman, on her own, and no self-respecting Jewish man would be seen with a woman in public who is not a relative;
Secondly, she is possibly a social outcast as she goes to draw water from the well in the middle of the day, not early morning when most women would come to the well; thirdly, she is a Samaritan.
Jesus, exhausted, sits down by a wellspring in the town of Sychar (which, interestingly, is known today by Samaritan, Jew, Christian, and Moslem as the ‘spring’ or ‘well ‘of Jacob).
And Jesus asks her for a drink! In this, he shows not only acknowledgement, but acceptance of her, and so begins a remarkable example for us to follow.
For Jesus shows compassion, mercy, love and care.
While the conversation starts with the physical need for water when Jesus asks her for a drink, he knows her needs are much greater and reveals to her that he is the Living Water.
Jesus used thirst as a picture of the spiritual need and longing that everyone has.
The woman asked Jesus to give her this water. Still, Jesus responded, “The water that I shall give will become in them (those who ask for it) a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life: The effect of this water does much more than simply satisfy the thirst of the one who drinks it.
It also creates something good, something life-giving in the heart of the one who drinks it. Jesus, the living water, quenches our thirst in life and brings hope, strength and peace in this life and eternal life.
Our invitation is to accept the living water of Jesus Christ and know this life for ourselves.