Water from the Well

A free-flowing artisan well in Prattville, Alabama 

We stopped by one of the artisan wells here in Prattville a few days ago to fill our water jugs.  I met the nicest lady who had come to fill hers as well, and we chatted while Larry helped an elderly gentleman carry several full containers to his pickup.  This was not the first time we've met and visited with people at what appears to be one of the most popular spots in town.  Earlier this summer we met a group of women from a church in Montgomery loading various sized containers, anything that held water, into their van. It was obviously as much a social event for them as they gathered around the well, laughing and talking among themselves.

When we first moved to Alabama almost 25 years ago, I didn't think much about the artisan wells in the area.  We were living in a brand new house and I was perfectly content with the water pouring out of those shiny kitchen spigots.  Besides, my life was simply too busy to be hauling bottles of water into the house for what was at that time a family of six.      

Fast forward to Elmira, New York where we would spend our final years of pastoral ministry.  We were settling into the parsonage when a member showed up with a water cooler and plopped it down in our kitchen.  "As long as you're here, you help yourselves to as much water as you want from my store." he insisted.  One sip of that pure, spring water was enough to convince us that it was worth the few miles drive to John's business to keep us in supply, and for the next ten years that's all we drank at home.  When one has had a taste of the best, it's hard to be satisfied with anything else.

"Take the cooler with you,"  John insisted when Larry offered to return it as we packed up our household items. "That was a gift."  And a wonderful gift it had been, but out of his generosity I had moved beyond simple preference to dissatisfaction with anything but that pure,  unadulterated spring water.  And the other downside to all of this, we'd have to start buying what had been so generously given to us over the past ten years.

Not too many days later we pulled into our Alabama driveway, this time to stay.  The moving truck had already been emptied of our belongings, including the water cooler which now sat empty in the kitchen corner.  A couple days later, we were drinking what had come from one of those same wells that I had hardly taken notice of all those years earlier.  A couple of the guys who were helping us move in had taken our empty jugs and filled them with water that was still pouring out of the ground all these years later.  It cost us nothing, and it was good.  Very good.

Larry filling up one of our jugs 

Back to that elderly gentleman who Larry was helping a few days ago.  "Some friends visiting here from Chicago took as much water as they could fit in their vehicle back home with them," he said.   I thought of those women who travel from Montgomery to fill their bottles from the well.  And as I stood talking with my new acquaintance, we couldn't miss the deeper meaning in all of this.  She recalled Jesus meeting the woman at the well, a place where she opened her heart to the greatest need in her life, the Living Water.  I remember that all those years ago, I was satisfied with what came out of my tap. It was fine. That is, until I had a taste of something that was so much better.

Prattville--also known as "The Fountain City"