I was visiting a friend near Avignon in the south of France. He and his wife labor (the word may not be strong enough) among the expatriate Arabs from the former French colonies of North Africa. It is not an easy work. The parched moral landscape of France is difficult enough, but work among the resolute followers of Mohammed can suck you dry if you’re not careful. Happily, my friends have discovered a mighty river whose source is hidden, but which flows unceasingly through them to the desperate dryness all around.
It was a glorious summer day as we headed by car out into the countryside to see one of the breathtaking sights of the south of France. After some time of meandering cross-country, I noticed we were travelling along a narrow valley which we shared with a fairly major river. The valley continued to constrict and I could see, looming ahead, a mountain that seemed to bar our way.
In fact, it was a box canyon. We would have to return the way we had entered. My friend knew that, of course. But there was something here he wanted me to see. If I had payed more attention in high school geography class, I would have anticipated something like this. After all, if there was a valley on either side, and a mountain closing off the far end, where was this river coming from?
It exploded, full-blown, from the heart of the mountain. This was no trickle, no rivulet or brook twisting its way among the rocks as it gathered momentum and volume. No, this is a major water system, most of it hidden away, that suddenly bursts into the sunlight and makes itself available to all who would enjoy its seemingly unlimited resources. This is Fontaine-de-Vaucluse–the Fountain of the Closed Valley.
Transport yourself back two thousand years. You are standing unobtrusively in another valley–the Vale of Shechem–in the hill country of Samaria. You can observe a woman, a Samaritan, making her way out of the village to draw water from the well, one dug by the patriarch Jacob eighteen hundred years before.
There is Someone already at the well. Evidently a Jew. He is sitting on its rim, weary from His journey, having walked 30 miles from the City of Peace. If you look into His eyes, you get the feeling that He knows the woman who is approaching–not only knows her, but loves her. She has known many men in her lifetime. But none like this One. She does not know Him yet, and she will be as surprised by Him as I was by the fountain in France.
It was to this soul-thirsty woman that the Saviour revealed first her own heart-need and then His offer of a drink of living water. Hesitantly, humbly, she stooped to drink (as we all must). Oh, the sweetness of it! How it cooled her inflamed conscience; how it swept away the encrusted defilement of years; how it softened her heart and brought refreshment and vigor to the one-time wasteland in her spirit. Everything He had promised was really true. O taste and see . . . !
But this heavenly Visitor had not promised her only a drink. He had promised her a wellspring! If she would receive Him as the life-giving water, out of her innermost being would flow an artesian spring so that others around her could be satiated too. Was it true?
Leaving her waterpot, she takes the river with her into the city. To every parched life she finds, she bears the message: “Come, see a Man, which told me all things that ever I did (and knowing the worst, loves me still). It couldn’t be the Messiah, could it?” The change in her is so startling, her satisfaction so evident, that many of the townsfolk also stoop and drink. It is not enough, however to taste the sweetness of her life in Christ. Making their way out to the well, they follow this river to its Source: “Now we believe,” they told the woman, “not because of thy saying: for we have heard Him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world” (Jn. 4:42).
What is a fountain anyway? Nothing. Nothing that allows those mighty resources out into the sunshine. We need not guess what these resources are: “This He spake of the Spirit, which they that believe on Him should receive” (Jn. 7:39).
It’s a dry and dusty world out there. When the valley closes in and mountains block our way, that’s just the place where you’ll find the fountain–the outflowing Spirit of God.