Cisterns are used to collect rainwater and store it until it is needed, especially in areas without municipal water supplies or where the depth of the ground water or the stony soil makes digging a well difficult. They have been particularly useful in areas where the rain comes all at once followed by long dry periods such as in Jeremiah’s Israel. His audience would have been well aware of how important it was not to let one’s dug cistern dry out because during the hot dry season the sides would crack open and be useless for containing water when the rains did come again. That image speaks to me of our need to keep the cistern of our heart moist with prayer, meditation, Bible study, whatever spiritual practices feed us and keep us in touch with the Divine even in our dry periods.

Jeremiah’s image of God as “the fountain of living water” is different. Living water is flowing water, uncontained, available for our taking, using, and sharing. The message I take from that image is to enjoy God’s blessings, gifts, grace that flow our way, while letting it move on in the economy of the Divine. If we try to dam up the stream to make a reservoir for ourselves alone without passing it along to others, the flow likely will cease. When Jesus was sending out the disciples to proclaim the good news of God’s love, he reminded them, “Freely ye have received, freely give”. (Mt.10:8 KJV) The beneficence of the Holy One is intended for each and all—no one has the corner on the market of God’s grace.

Jesus, in speaking to the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well, picked up on Jeremiah’s living water metaphor and extended it. “Jesus answered her, ‘If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water, . . . Everyone who drinks of this water(from Jacob’s well) will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” (Jn.4:10,13-14) “The fountain of living water”, “a spring of water gushing up” from within satiating our thirst for God, always available regardless of the weather going on in our lives, ours for the asking, Jesus says.