They say we are made of 70% water. A staggering proportion, almost absurd when you think about it: our great emotions, our outbursts of anger, our moments of tenderness, all of this moves through a few dozen liters of water.
So of course, in our time, we worry a great deal about the quality of what we drink. Of what we eat. Of what we breathe. “With a religious care,” an advertiser once put it, “we must choose the water of which tomorrow we shall be made.”
And that is right. But Jesus takes us elsewhere. He gently turns the question around. He does not ask us first: what is entering you? but: what is coming out of you?
“There is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him.”
Mark 7:15 (ESV)
Our words, our silences, our moods, the gaze we cast on others. This is what truly says who we are. This is what can refresh, or poison, those who live alongside us.
The image is beautiful, and it is demanding: to become drinkable. Not to become perfect — no one is — but to become someone from whom others can drink without fear. Someone whose presence quenches thirst. Someone with whom you can lay down your weariness without it being judged.
God does not purify us so that we may stay alone with our beautiful clear water. He purifies us so that we may flow toward others.
“Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’”
John 7:38 (ESV)
“Rivers of living water,” says Jesus. Not a private puddle. A river flowing down.