Thoughts from here and there…Dry Old Well1
John Sanford recalls his boyhood experience spending a month each summer in an old farmhouse in New Hampshire. The house was more than 150 years old and had never been modernized.
Sanford reflects, “My father was the minister of a modest-sized Episcopal church, we were always short of money, and so for a long time we lived in the house quite simply without the benefit of modern plumbing or electricity.” Their water supply came from an old well which was just outside the front door. He recalls that the water from the well was unusually cold and pure and “a joy to drink.” The well never ran dry even in the severest summer droughts. Other families would be forced to resort to the lake for their drinking water, while this well continued to yield its cool, clear water.
Eventually the Sanfords decided to modernize the house. Modern plumbing and running water were installed. They no longer needed the old well so they sealed it. The old well would be kept in reserve in case their new modern well would ever fail them.
One day a couple of summers later John’s curiosity got the best of him. He decided to uncover the well to inspect its condition. “As I removed the cover,” he writes, “I fully expected to see the same dark, cool, moist depths I had known so well as a boy.” It was quite a shock for him when he discovered that the once faithful well was bone dry.
“It took many inquiries on our part to understand what had happened,” he writes. By not using the well the hundreds of tiny underground rivulets dried up. As water was drawn from the well, more water moved into it, keeping the tiny apertures clear and open. When the well was not used and the water not drawn, the tiny rivulets closed up.
Sanford compares his boyhood experience with his faith, “What happened to the old well can also happen to our souls if the living water of God does not flow into us.”
Does living water flow in our souls? Is our faith alive and do we bear fruit as a result? Those are some questions to keep in mind as you consider John Sanford and the well..
1THE KINGDOM WITHIN. John A. Sanford. San Francisco: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1987, pp. 7-8.