Christ frees our weary soul

As much as we might start out with the idea that our parents know what we’re thinking, we soon learn that they really don’t. And it also isn’t long before we realize that who we really are inside and what we really think is unknowable to others as well. That realization is an exhilarating thing—at first.

But eventually, this inner person starts developing and carrying inflexible biases and longstanding fears. Our soul becomes a hiding place for haunting regrets and favorite grudges and stubborn doubts. At least, those were the burdens that were wearing me down at a pivotal time in my life. I needed to own up to my failed marriage. Poverty and ill health made my pride and pretension truly silly. And the religious believing that I’d trusted all my life was failing me. Everything that I’d wrapped tightly around me as “me” was lost. Or at least I thought it was.

What I learned, though, is that our “living soul,” the consciousness that God inspired, isn’t meant to be a static, rigid place. This eternal, hidden part of our individuality needs, instead, to be more like a living underground cavern, something that contains the flowing water of regeneration and change. And I think that is what Jesus was telling the Samaritan woman when he offered her the “living water” that “bubbles up into eternal life” (CEB John 4:10-14).

            The Lord is the only one who knows what we are really thinking, the burden our soul is carrying around. And Christ’s spirit of “living water” is always present there in our heart, always ready to cleanse, strengthen, and transform us. We just need to be thirsty enough, and lonely enough, to allow that to happen.

“Please, Lord, Free my weary soul from worry, Help me feel you by my side. Shelter me from stress and hurry, Loving Saviour, strength and guide.” (Living Calm, 2016)