Well of life

Where are you finding strength these days? What resources keep you going? Does it ever feel like you’ve run out of gas, that you’ve come upon a dead end, that your well has gone dry?

As we begin Holy Week, I want to focus on the psalm selected for this Monday in Holy Week, which is included above. It provides beautiful context for the ways that we make our way not only through this week, but also through all of life with all of its challenges. The psalm speaks of the lovingkindness of God, love from which we can never be separated. That love is at the heart of Holy Week, which is to say that it is at the heart of our faith. Here’s the verse from this particular psalm that always catches my attention:

For with you is the well of life, and in your light we see light.

Going back to the questions raised in the opening paragraph: Is it well with your well? A friend who was senior pastor of a large non-denominational church told me that from time his senior lay leadership would come to him with this question: Is it well with your soul? Much has been written about clergy burn-out, about how to keep going in ministry. I know that challenge, yet I don’t need to tell you that that dynamic is in no way limited to clergy. Where do we go to discover the well of life when it feels like our own well has run dry? Maybe you feel like that this Monday morning.

The verse about the well of life makes me think about the story of Jesus meeting the woman at the well (John 4). One could imagine that the woman Jesus met there was on her last nerve, at the end of her rope. Five marriages hadn’t worked out. Who knows about the current relationship? She came to the well at an hour when nobody else would be around, suggesting she was being ostracized. Add to that her awareness of the discrimination a good Jew like Jesus might show her. Where was she finding the resources to move forward?

Jesus and this woman get talking about water, about resources for life, about where to access those resources. It’s about a whole lot more than H2O. The woman comes to ask for living water, drawn from a well that will make it well with her soul. Jesus promises and provides that resource.

We come to Holy Week with the same request. How can we obtain life-giving resources when our well has gone dry? Where can we find living water? Where can we find the well of life? Allow this Holy Week to answer those questions. Pray the collect for today which asks that as we walk the way of the cross today, we will find it be the way of life and peace (You can find this collect on p. 220 of the Prayer Book). In the end, as the verse from the psalm says, we will see light. That is our hope for this week, the hope for all of our weeks.

-Jay Sidebotham