Isaiah 12:3 With joy you will draw water
    from the wells of salvation.

This very brief chapter has had multiple songs made from it, and they are all fighting for a place in my active memory even as I write! I don’t recall this verse being set to music, but I first became actively aware of it when Andrae Crouch quoted it in passing, during a concert that was recorded for an album. I had of course read it before that, since I read through the Bible for the first time by the time I was 10. However, when Andrae mentioned it in the flow of worship, not giving any reference for it, I immediately recognized that it had to be Biblical, but I had no idea what book of the Bible, even. That was before personal computers, so I located a printed concordance and tracked it down. The image is very telling. Salvation is available, but we are actively involved in receiving it. You can’t get water from a well without action on your part. (They certainly didn’t have pressure-controlled pumps back then.) Connecting water with salvation is a very apt metaphor in an arid land, because you can certainly die of dehydration. And when we discover and receive God’s salvation, it is joyous indeed!

We used well water in the house where I grew up, but even then the technology was such that I never thought about where the water came from when I turned the handle on the tap. It wasn’t a very deep well, and my father took a sample once a year to the city health office to be tested. As more and more houses were built around us, one year the health office told my father we would have to start putting chemicals in the well, or we would risk serious disease. Fortunately it wasn’t many years after that that the city water and sewer system made it out to where we lived, but during that interval the water certainly didn’t taste very wonderful! On the point of salvation, my family was committed to telling people about it and persuading them to let down their buckets and drink, but success in that mission was never guaranteed, nor is it today. I’ve lost count of how many people I’ve told about God’s salvation, only to have them turn away, not recognizing that it was essential to them personally. Some people seem to have hydrophobia until they die of dehydration! That is heartbreaking indeed, but I have learned the hard way that I can’t save anyone in my own strength, I can only tell them about what is available. They have to make the choice, the commitment, themselves. Repentance is a hard sticking point for many, because it means change; we have to admit we were wrong. Hell is full of people who were too proud to do that. I’ve got to keep speaking the truth in love, and ask the Holy Spirit to use my words to open people’s eyes to see both their own need and God’s supply, so that they too may receive His salvation.

Father, You know how close this is to my heart, and who I am working with particularly right now. I ask You to send Your Spirit indeed, so that they may see and believe that You love them enough to send Your Son to die for them, and so respond to that love in repentance and faith. Thank You. Hallelujah!