Broken cisterns

They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, and hewn themselves cisterns – broken cisterns that can hold no water. – Jeremiah 2:13

Picture yourself swinging a pick, digging from dawn to dusk, chiseling a cistern out of the hard, unyielding stone. You stay on the job, working through the biting cold of winter and the blazing heat of summer.

After years of strenuous effort you finally complete the task. Then you step back and wait for your cistern to fill – that all cisterns, no matter how well constructed, will leak.

The story is a picture of the futility of our attempts to find satisfaction in life. It’s an age-old problem.

God told the prophet Jeremiah that His people "have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters." Instead, they had expended their efforts on "broken cisterns that can hold no water" (Jeremiah 2:13).

Are you driven by soul-thirst, yearning for satisfaction? There is a spring of living water, rising from hidden depths, pouring into our hearts, satisfying us even as it makes us thirst for more. Stoop down and drink.

Only God can satisfy your heart. Everything else will deceive and disappoint. "Whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst," said Jesus. "But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life (John 4:14). – David Roper

I thirsted in the barren land of sin and shame,

And nothing satisfying there I found;

But to the blessed cross of Christ one day I came,

Where springs of living water did abound. – Peterson

READ: John 4:9-14

Only Living Water can quench the driving thirst of the soul.

The Bible in one year:

• Psalm 119:1-88

• 1 Corinthians 7:20-40