It is strange to reflect back to the farm days and conclude that so much of the existence of our farm revolved around an old iron water pump.
We had no running water in the rabbit coop, chicken coop, or the two barns. Every day of the year water had to be pumped and carried in large buckets to all the animals. Their existence depended on it.
Spring, summer, fall, winter.... The pump never failed. Every season it provided life-giving water. It never froze in the winter and never dried up in the summer. It was just something that I took for granted. I never had much appreciation or fondness for that water pump until later in life.
And old cup would dangle from a wire off the old black iron pump. Hundreds of times us thirsty workers would pump a cup full, drink it down, and go on with a glancing thought of gratitude.
Today I can relate to the words of King David of Israel when he said, “Oh that one would give me drink of the water of the well of Bethlehem, which is by the gate!” (2 Samuel 23:15).
But Jesus said, “Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again: But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.” (John 4:13b-14).
Jesus is that spiritual well from Bethlehem that can quench the thirst of every parched soul. The songwriters once wrote, “Come to this water, there is a vast supply. There is a river that never shall run dry!”
