The Things That Matter

This Sunday afternoon after coming home and cleaning up our messes and washing the dishes,
I was hungry for God's Word--and something that would relate to what I was dealing with,
something that mattered.


Deeply disturbed about something that had happened earlier, I went out to the deck to read my Bible, doubting that John 4 would have anything to say to where I was at the moment--
but in fact, that chapter was richer than I ever experienced before in my life.

I had read the first part of the chapter another day, how Jesus sat down at Jacob's well to rest.
"being wearied with His journey, He sat thus on the well."
And we, being weary, sit as well, at times,
wondering,
pondering,
sometimes floundering.

But whether He meets us sitting at the well, or we come to Him with an empty water pot,
He will be sure to bring us right to the point of the things that matter.

Water was what mattered to the Samaritan woman,

and Christ used her need of water to offer her the exquisite gift of Living Water--

and more than that,

a Fountain of Water, Springing up into Everlasting Life!

The word pictures were profound.
Nothing sparse or poverty-stricken here!

His words flowed with abundance,
flowing,
gushing,
springing,
splashing,
everlasting.

And when she asked for that Living Water,
Christ again confronted her with something that mattered--
her sin.

He could not give her that Fountain of Springing Water

with the sin in her life.

And so He confronts us today with what matters--our sin

and His righteousness.

Our mess and His salvation.

All at the same time, commentary Matthew Henry notes,
the woman both denies and confesses her sin.
Christ graciously and tactfully puts the best construction on what she said,
taking her denial as confession!

And then He brings her religious question around to not where  we are to worship,

which doesn't matter,

but how--which does matter.

We are to worship not only in spirit,

but in truth.

We cannot worship God while living a lie,
believing a lie, or swallowing something that is not in truth.
We cannot base our lives and worship on the winds of people's opinions
or strange winds of doctrines.

We do not test the spirits by what someone's father did,
or someone's mother said,
but on God's holy word.

When the disciples, who had gone shopping at some country general store, came back to Christ and urged Him to eat, His response was that His meat was to do His Father's will.

Those words stuck with me:
"My Father's will."

When our Father's will means more to us than our food and drink,
we have caught on to the things that matter:

our Father's will,
our Savior's Word,
the Spirit's wisdom.

And when those are the things that matter the most to us
as we follow our Shepherd's way,
then through every busy day,

or every lonely night,

we can be assured that we may experience that Fountain of Springing Water,
and the comfort of
His Sheltering Wing.