John_4
2014 Bible Reading,  John

John 4

John_4

John Chapter 4 talks much about water. In verses 1 and 2, it reports that Jesus made disciples by baptizing them. Then in the hot and dry scenario evoked by Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman, it revolves around water – the physical water that the Samaritan woman and Jesus Himself needed at that time, and the spiritual water that Jesus offered for eternal life.

Water is something that we take so much for granted. It is so normal that I was intrigued to learn in secondary school science class that actually water is very abnormal. While almost every other matter contracts when it passes from a liquid state to a solid state, water does the reverse – at 4°C, water begins to expand, and when it freezes at 0°C, the ice is now ‘lighter’ than the liquid water around it. Thus, ice forms starting from the top of a lake or river. It seals in the warmer water below it and actually acts as an insulator from the harsh atmosphere outside (which could drop to -40°C in polar countries). Life can continue underneath the ice through the winter!

I am amazed because my eyes are open to God’s hand in this very special substance. Scientists generally believe that water is necessary for life to exist and search for extraterrestrial life in planets where they think water possibly exists (this should be a wild goose chase because they are not looking for the Hand that created this water and life that is sustained by water). Here is an interesting website for more anomalies of water: http://www1.lsbu.ac.uk/water/anmlies.html

Bible Passage: John 4

Similarly, man is not as normal as we take ourselves to be. Of all living things on earth, we are extremely abnormal – no other thing, living or otherwise, is better than this creation of God. Though evolutionists and atheists now want us to believe that man is but one of the beasts, God wants us to know that, though there are so many of us, we are all precious in His sight:

When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers,
The moon and the stars, which You have ordained,

What is man that You are mindful of him,
And the son of man that You visit him?

For You have made him a little lower than the angels,
And You have crowned him with glory and honor.

You have made him to have dominion over the works of Your hands;
You have put all things under his feet,
(Psalms 8:3-6)

Some people have grown so used to seeing other people that they fail to see the uniqueness of each person and the preciousness of each soul. Just like water, some would disdain it for diamonds, until the time when deep dry thirst would make them realize that those are but stones and dirt. Jesus saw the need of the Samaritan woman and the need of the Samaritans, and He valued them as precious. He offered her precious spiritual water for her precious soul analogous to the precious water for her precious physical life.

13, 14  Jesus answered and said to her, “Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.”

Let us remember to see the special in the ordinary. Without water, beautiful blue Earth will be like rocky lifeless Mars. Without the special underlying nature of water, life would struggle to exist. This abnormality is the creative signature of God. In the offer of the spiritual water, He weaves His creative power once more for an eternal life that surpasses even this amazing one that we have now.

He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water But this He spoke concerning the Spirit, whom those believing in Him would receive;

(John 7:38,39)

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