Life Abounding
BY W. A. CRISWELL John 4:13,14
HERE IS A melancholy in this life that we cannot obviate. Shelley, the poet, wrote, "Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought. However we seek to drown the experiences and exigencies of life in comedy or in laughter, beyond and over and beside is always that sadness, that melancholy."
This is not surprising. Our Lord Jesus, whom Isaiah 53 describes as a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, says, "Whoever drinks of the water of this life shall thirst again" (John 4:13).
A dramatic portrayal of that word of the Lord is given by the life of King Solomon. He was an oriental potentate. He possessed an unlimited monarchy. And he could take every experience in life and press it to its utmost extremity.
Vanity. Solomon writes of it extensively in the Book of Ecclesiastes. He says: "And I gave my heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all things that are done under heaven" (1:13). But he soon found that "in much wisdom is much grief" (v. 18), that all those things only increased his sorrow.
He then did his utmost to find the meaning of life in mirth and pleasure, but found drowning the sorrows of life in alcohol and excesses to be futile. He also discovered that having great accomplishments and great possessions was equally empty and meaningless.
Through every horizon that he came, he just looked at the further horizon beyond. And when he climbed every mountain, the stars
were as far away as though he had just begun. Finally, he writes one of the saddest verdicts of human life: "Therefore I hated life; because the work that is wrought under the sun is grievous unto me: for all is vanity and vexation of spirit" (2:17).Tragedy. What a tragedy! A pessimist wrote: "The world rolls round forever like a mill. It grinds out life and death, good and ill. It has no purpose, heart or mind or will. Nay, it doth use man harshly as he set. It grinds him some slow years of bitter breath, then grinds him back into eternal death."
Life, by nature, is like that. And if you haven't yet found it so, you will. Its emptiness and its sterility, its meaninglessness and its nothingness will increasingly press itself like a judgment, like a darkness, upon you.
And that's why our Lord says that drink of the water of this life and you will thirst and thirst and thirst.
Living Water
But Jesus goes on to say: "Whosoever drinks of the water that I give him shall never thirst. But the water I give him shall be in him a fountain, a well, of water, bursting forth into everlasting abounding life."Oh, what a difference Jesus can make in a life. In Christ, our citizenship is in heaven, from whence we look for our Savior. What a difference a change in citizenship can make.
Two Frenchmen were talking and one told the other that he was going to take out citizenship in Britain, and he did. Shortly afterwards, when the two were back together again, he said to his friend, "I am now a British subject."
His Frenchman friend said, "Well, you don't look any different to me; you look just the same as you did before."
But said the Frenchman who was now an Englishman, "You just don't know the change that is wrought. When I was a Frenchman, Waterloo was a defeat. Now that I'm an Englishman, Waterloo is a victory!"
That is the kind of difference that is made in our lives when we change our citizenship, when we begin following and loving and serving the Lord Jesus. The blessings you get when you drink at the well of the water of life are endless.
Meaningful sorrows. True, we will still have sorrows and hurts, but they become explicable to us. Every tear that falls and every agonizing hurt of life becomes meaningful because you know God has a good, eternal reason for it.
Fanny Crosby was the writer of some of the most beautiful hymns in the world. Among them are "Blessed Assurance", "Jesus is Tenderly Calling", "Near the Cross", and "Safe in the Arms of Jesus". As many of you know, she was blind all of her life.
On the other side of the ocean, in England, was another wonderful hymnista woman named Frances Havergal. One day, Havergal, over in England, wrote a letter in verse to blind Fanny Crosby. This is part of what she wrote:
Sweet blind singer over the sea,
tuneful and jubilant how can it be
that the songs of gladness which float so far
are the notes of one who may never see?
One in the east and one in the west
singing for Him whom our souls love best.
Sister, what will our meeting be
when our hearts shall sing and our eyes shall see.
Think of being blind all the days of your life, having never seen. Yet, out of the hurt and the sorrow of such blindness, such wonderful notes of joy and praise arise.
That's what Jesus can do in human life. He can turn our tears and our sorrows into jubilant praise and song. By fully trusting in Christ, you'll find meaning and purpose in every sorrow we know in life. God is just pitting us for heaven.
Spiritual perspective. Yes, when you drink of the water that Jesus gives, it'll be a fountain of water rushing, abounding, overflowing in everlasting life. Once you realize that you will spend eternity in heaven with Christ, you'll look at the things of this world in a new perspective.
John Chrysostom, the great preacher in Constantinople, incurred the wrath of the Roman Emperor. The Emperor told him, "I will banish you from your home." John Chrysostom replied, "Sir, the whole world is my father's house."
The Emperor then said, "I will separate you from all of your treasure and all of your friends." Chrysostom answered, "But my treasure is in heaven and my friend is Jesus and He never fails."
Finally the Emperor said, "Then I will take your life." Still in perfect peace, Chrysostom replied, "But my life is with Christ, in God."
What are you going to do with a man like that? Absolutely no relation does he sustain with anything that he has, not even his life in this house of clay. How precious it is to live a life that is separated from anything that has to do with materiality. Just living in the Lord, just looking to Jesus, just finding every rich preciousness in Him.
So, give your heart to the Lord Jesus. Once you have totally surrendered to Christ, you will find in the light of eternal glory the things of this world insignificant, and all your sorrows worthy of praise. o
Dr. W. A. Criswell is pastor of First Baptist Church, 1707 San Jacinto, Dallas, TX 75201.