When I lived in California, we had droughts, but they didn’t seem like what’s being reported now. Restaurants stopped bringing glasses of water when you sat down and before you ordered. You had to ask for it which made it special. The tinkling of ice in a glass seemed like jewels--small treasures that would bring refreshment if only for a few brief moments until you drank the water and asked for a refill or the ice disappointing as It melted into nothing but a little more water. We were told to flush toilets only when necessary. If it’s yellow, let it mellow. I remember seeing signs like that in public toilets. But the Wall Street Journal reports that the drought California is facing now is the worst on record, so whatever is going on there now is much worse than what I’m remembering.

I’ve been reading an article about a family of wheat farmers in Kansas and their upcoming harvest. Because of the war between Russia and Ukraine, wheat prices were high at one point; good news for the farmers in Kansas save one problem: drought. The lack of water meant that the harvest was delayed and the wheat itself was not growing as full as a normal season The rising price of diesel and fertilizer add layers to the uncertainty. Describing the dilemma David, a farmer, says, “It feels like we’ve been pulled into a high-stakes poker game . . . What happens if we have a crop failure or prices crash? It’s a scary time.”

In another story about drought, this time in Romania, an 81-year-old woman says she’s never seen a drought like the one they’re facing today. "We have children, we have cattle,” she says. “We make an effort to plant tomatoes in the garden and they dry out and we have nothing to eat. God, give us rain, don't abandon us."

The Financial Times just ran a story about how a cyclone drenched Crimea with damaging rains that gave a reprieve to the region from the shortage of water brought on by drought and the water blockades from the war.

And the UK has gotten a lot of news coverage about their heat wave but there may be more to this story. The Guardian reports, “The UK is facing the prospect of a drought being declared in August, experts have said, warning of potential crop failures after a period of remarkably dry weather and extreme heat.”

It’s confusing when the sun plays tricks on us. I’ve been in the desert when I’ve seen mirages—water that when you get close to it disappears. I asked Lorraine if she had ever seen a mirage, and her memories of it are in the heat of summer and the blacktops of Detroit—vapors roiling to give the appearance of water where there is none. The sun decides to be a magician. Sleight of hand. Tricked you. No water here after all. It’s just an interesting illusion. I say interesting because I readily have access to water from a tap or a bottle. Otherwise, I might say tormenting or terrifying or life-threatening.

True thirst is a real thing. I’m not sure that I have ever really experienced that.

When the conversation began between Jesus and the Samaritan woman, it began with Jesus asking her to give him some water. In that time and place, there were no cases of bottled water or taps; you had to walk to a well. As they talked, the request for water went from the lips of Jesus requesting thirst-quenching water to the lips of the woman asking Jesus for a different kind of water.

“Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”

And then the disciples came, confused. She fled without her jar into the town to say to the others, “Come and see.”

I don’t want to diminish the struggles the world is facing with not enough water for people or crops. They are real. Often when we see suffering like those from drought, we want to do something to help people in need.

At the same time, there’s living water that is only Jesus, and mirages all around us. People fill their jars without the water that is Christ only to find when they do, life, like the desert or blacktop sun, plays a trick on them. No water in that jar after all. That which seems so fulfilling roils and dissolves into nothing at all. And the thirst, the longing that so often goes unrecognized, becomes more intense at the realization that what you thought was real water is really not.

Jesus not only offers living water; that's what he is. Nothing else is living water. Earnest devotion and determined discipline focused on whatever other kind of water leads only to dry, parched thirst. The longing and striving are their own drought. What can we do to help people in this kind of drought?

Perhaps we have only to say, “Come and see” like the Samaritan woman did. This woman wasn’t even sure what was going on, but she knew enough that she couldn’t keep it to herself. She wasn’t about to be fooled by the desert sun or wells. She was so eager to tell the others that she left her jar behind. She had encountered Christ and everything changed for her, for the Samaritans in town.

“Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony, ‘He told me all that I ever did.’ So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days. And many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, ‘It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world.’”

The Samaritans accepted the women's Invitation to come and see, but in the end, Jesus's thirst-quenching words met their deepest need—for the Savior. Living water has come—for us and for them.