Broken Cisterns
Broken Cisterns
Imagine a great deep river, overflowing, ever-flowing with limpid, glistening water, pure and fresh. The King has decreed that everyone who wishes may come and draw their water from the bountiful fountain. Nor is it ordinary water: it is living water, able to quench your thirst forever.
Imagine now that the people reject the King’s generous offer. Rumors are spread that the river is a mirage. “The waters cannot really satisfy!” The people turn their backs to the river and dig their own wells. They hope to reach water, but they never do. Their crops shrivel up, they themselves are dying of thirst, but still they refuse to approach the river. What foolish people!
“For my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.” Jeremiah 2:13.
God is called in the Scriptures the “fountain of life” (Psalm 36:9) in whom we can find abundant and constant satisfaction. “All our springs are in him and our streams from him,” says Matthew Henry in his commentary. Yet we have turned away from this bountiful provision. Instead, we have turned to searching for water in dry cisterns, broken cisterns, cisterns of our own digging. We have cheated ourselves, trading the glorious river for lying vanities.
In his sermon “The Weight of Glory,” C. S. Lewis described us as “half-hearted creatures... far too easily pleased.” We search for pleasure in nothings while turning our backs on Everything.
We seek for satisfaction in beauty, but our hearts ache. Deep we feel that the stirring chord, the lovely painting, the magnificent poem is only a vague glimpse of that something else which we really desire.
Empty.
We turn to fame. We vie with each other for the honor and remembrance of man. We cannot bear to think that we will be rejected or forgotten. Our spirit cringes when we see intimations of decay: flowers wither, oaks fall, gravestone epitaphs are smoothed away. Must everything perish?
Dry.
We look for the love of men. Perhaps we search for meaning or purpose in our family or friends or romantic relationships. Very soon we find that humanity is a fickle, wicked thing. It uses us and then leaves us lonely.
Cracked.
We join the pursuit of wealth. We accumulate treasures; we increase our bank accounts; we fill our homes with the latest and greatest. Yet when the excitement is over, what are we left with? Only stuff.
Thirsty.
Perhaps we turn to intellect. We revel in books and lectures. Others admire our logic, our confident intelligence, our familiarity with grave philosophical questions. But what is all the wisdom of the world, when you come to the end of your life and discover that you have missed the Truth?
Barren.
All of them broken cisterns.
We take such pains in hewing out our cisterns, but they are false. Do not fool yourself. Do not promise yourself comfort or joy in anything but God. Do not hope in lies. When the desert wind blows and the sun beats down, we go to quench our thirst at the cisterns and find... nothing. In our hour of need, earthly pleasures betray us.
Where else can we go but to the Fountain of Living Waters?
Painting: At the Well. Winslow Homer.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009