Sallie Forrester
St. Clare of Assisi Writing Group
On the last and greatest day of the feast, Jesus stood up and exclaimed, “Let anyone who thirsts come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as scripture says: ‘Rivers of living water will flow from within him.’ He said this in reference to the Spirit that those who came to believe in him were to receive. There was, of course, no Spirit yet, because Jesus had not yet been glorified. (John 7:37–39)
Jesus is always waiting for us at the well of life, with his cup of salvation. He invites us to give him our sins and take the cup. Jesus gave us life through his Crucifixion and Resurrection from the dead. In the Passion of Christ, we participate in the sharing of God’s spirit—the rivers of living water flow through us as believers in Christ. Anyone who thirsts is invited to believe in Christ and drink from his cup. We are glorified in and through Christ’s Passion. The struggle to be real is difficult. We want to just be, but our attachments to the world require us to stay busy. The world wants us to be busy doing and not being. Yet we yearn to be about love, as God is love. Every day in our ego’s forgetfulness, we try to reach God through our merit. We forget that it is God’s grace that saves us. Each day, each hour, each minute, each moment, we can start again and just love. It is only through prayer that we find the straight path, as we are tempted to move through the mazes of worldly attachments. We find that focusing our attention and disciplining ourselves through prayer is the soothing balm that we need to start the process of turning away from sin and looking to God more steadily.
In prayer, we find ourselves falling deeper and deeper in love with our Creator. We seek prayer as we seek to spend time with our beloved Savior. The more we pray, the easier it gets to remember in the moments of difficult times that prayer is where we will find the answers to our problems and the relief to what ails us. We remember that Jesus is with us, ready for us to hand him our attachments to sin.
Open up to the rivers of living water, let it wash over you as it nourishes you and everyone around you with the love of God.