Spiritual memoirs are enjoying renewed popularity, and Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love has been the latest success story. A chronicle of her midlife crisis and quest for fulfillment, the book and subsequent movie captures her journey to Italy for food, India for spiritual enlightenment, and Bali for romance.
Critics have labeled Eat, Pray, Love narcissistic and shallow. Gilbert has an illicit affair, she embraces an “all-roads-lead-to-God” approach to religion, and her spirituality becomes somewhat self-focused. Still, millions have devoured her book. Its popularity reveals a worldwide spiritual thirst.
Another woman comes to mind as I contemplate this phenomenon. Her need was for water rather than exotic food, and she walked a half-mile to a distant well to get it. “If you only knew the gift God has for you and whom you are speaking to,” a Man had said to her there, “you would ask Me, and I would give you living water” (John 4:10).
Her search for love had been long and complex. “Go and get your husband,” the Man had said, before accurately disclosing that she wasn’t married to the man she was living with and that her past was checkered with many different husbands (vv.16-18).
As for prayer, the woman’s people had a sullied spiritual history (2 Kings 17:29), so her knowledge of God was flawed (John 4:20-22). But she knew the coming Messiah would clarify everything. “I am the Messiah!” Jesus told her (v.26).
For this woman, something more was needed than food, sexual love, or vague spirituality. She found that “something more” in Jesus. Soon her story was bringing other spiritually hungry people to Him (vv.39-42). I hope Elizabeth Gilbert will one day have a similar story to tell.
NLT 365-day reading plan passage for today: Mark 4:1-29
More:
Read Psalm 42:1; Isaiah 44:3, 55:1; and Revelation 21:6 for other ways spiritual thirst is addressed in the Bible.
Next:
Why do you think books like Eat, Pray, Love are so popular? How has Jesus, the living water, quenched your spiritual thirst?
roxanne robbins on July 9, 2011 at 6:37 am
Sheridan – This is a fabulous post and portrayal of the “woman at the well’s” quest for more. God is so gracious and to enable our hungering hearts to experience genuine and lasting satisfaction through Him.
sheridan voysey on July 11, 2011 at 6:16 am
Loved your last post too, Roxanne. (If you missed it folks: http://www.ourdailyjourney.org/2011/07/06/color-blind/)
Nice writing with you, whether on spiritual ‘sight’ or ‘hunger’.
mzkitty50 on July 9, 2011 at 7:19 am
I am enjoying the daily devotions I receive each morning. Thank you.
I just wondered about the ‘woman’ who had had many husbands. Just wondering if possibly she had many husbands because of the custom that if her first husband died and she had no children the dead mans brother was to take her as his wife and if he died the next brother was to have her as a wife,etc (to keep the family name/line alive). Gen.38:8, Deut. 25:5 – ???
sheridan voysey on July 11, 2011 at 6:24 am
Hi mzkitty50.
I think Nuka is right, below. We don’t know for sure that the Samaritan woman hadn’t lost her previous ‘husbands’ due to death, but the fact that she was currently living with a man who wasn’t her husband suggests strongly that this may have been her relational pattern. I think John is showing us how a ‘sinner’ (and not, say, a ‘griever’) responds to Jesus.
Nuka on July 9, 2011 at 9:03 am
Wonderful word of God indeed, & it reveals the true need in the hearts of many in the world today.
@mzkitty50 I don’t think it would have been so though, especially considering Jesus’ tone in speech in revealing her lifestyle to her & her declaration to her people “Come and see a man who told me everything I ever did!”. It isn’t possible to say clearly though. However, one thing that remains clear is that she was living in adultery (a man who wasn’t her husband), and a sinner in dire need of a righteous saviour. God bless you.
sheridan voysey on July 11, 2011 at 6:24 am
Nicely put, Nuka.