Wells of Water

Today water has been on my mind.  It started out with some of the things I read in the scriptures this morning and I planned to write about some of the verses in the scriptures that talk about water symbolically.  Then in the middle of the day I found out that the combination of snow melting quickly and a leaky rain gutter at my house was causing water to come into our basement.  So the rest of my day was spent trying to get rid of water from the basement and around the house.  Given that, I thought it would be fitting to look at some of the symbolism related to water that we read about in the scriptures.    

                The Lord seems to use the lack of water as a symbol of wickedness and spiritual problems.  In Jeremiah we read these words of the Lord: “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).  If we reject the Savior then we are like broken containers that should have water but can’t hold it.  Similarly, Peter spoke of the wicked in these terms: “These are wells without water, clouds that are carried with a tempest” (2 Peter 2:17).  Again we have this idea that water should be there (in the well), but it isn’t.  Isaiah spoke of those who fight against Zion using the metaphor of “a thirsty man dreameth, and, behold, he drinketh; but he awaketh, and, behold, he is faint” (Isaiah 29:8).  Just as the things of the world appear to provide nourishment to us, in the end it is only a façade, and the only true water that nourishes comes from Him who is the Living Water.

                Water is likewise used in the scriptures to show the nourishment that we receive from the Lord.  He declared to the woman at the well, “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 4:14).  The world offers only water that is transitory, but the Lord gives us living water.  His is the water that truly heals as is portrayed in the vision of Ezekiel.  He saw the future temple at Jerusalem and how “waters issued out from under the threshold of the house eastward” and ultimately brought life and healing to the Dead Sea (Ezekiel 47:1).  As we follow the Lord, ultimately we develop that living water—goodness, truth, and the other attributes of our Father in Heaven—in us.  The Lord told us in our dispensation, “But unto him that keepeth my commandments I will give the mysteries of my kingdom, and the same shall be in him a well of living water, springing up unto everlasting life” (D&C 63:23).  The world offers us “wells without water” as Peter said, but the Lord can give us the “well of living water” that will never run out if we will partake of it.