Wells and water

You know how sometimes you get the feeling God is speaking to you, but you’re not quite sure? “Wow, God, that’s the second time someone has said that to me. If I hear it one more time, I’ll know it’s from You!” We’ve got this thing here in Brussels about wells and water. We don’t know what God’s saying, but we keep running into the same idea time and time again.

It all started in March when we came to Brussels with our advance team. One of our team members, Mike Taylor, led a devotional from John 4, the story of Jesus and the woman at the well. Mike encouraged us as we walked and prayed around the city to look for the “wells” – places where people were attempting to find satisfaction in life. If we could meet them there, perhaps we could introduce them to Jesus, the giver of real life.

The passage really struck me and I thought about its similarities to ministry needs and opportunities in Brussels. Just like the Samaritan woman, we will be meeting people whose lifestyle choices have resulted in their rejection from society. Attitudes towards sexuality are very liberal here, so many would come to their wells with brokenness and confusion. The religious argument the Samaritan woman tried to start with Jesus reminds me of issues between Catholics and Protestants in Belgium. And we long for a response to Jesus like the Samaritan villagers, curious about Jesus once they heard the woman’s testimony.

As a team, we’ve all had surprising encounters with verses from Scripture about wells and water. Verses we have read in our quiet times, sermons in churches, and throwaway comments in seemingly random conversations have all pointed us towards God’s desire to quench the thirsty in Brussels with living water at His well.

Most famous European cities are known for large bodies of water that pass through them. Paris has the Seine. London, the Thames. Budapest, the Danube and Amsterdam, its canals. But what about Brussels? There’s no large body of water to be found - or so it would seem. But we have discovered that there actually is a river in Brussels – it just runs underground. And the truth is that it hasn’t always, but does today because past generations of Belgians built over it! We believe God has rivers of life for people who live in Brussels, but they may be out of sight, hidden, underground. We want to bring living water to places where people can drink.

So you can imagine our surprise when we were looking at houses and found that the one we liked was on a street whose name in English means, “Riverbank.” There is actually a small river across the street. Is God placing us on the bank of the river so we can offer life to those we meet?

But even more surprising to us was our village. We will live in Woluwe, a town that is just to the east of the center of town. It is very convenient to the European institutions and is widely recognized as a nice place to live for people who work there. But the name is what’s significant. “Woluwe” is derived from a Flemish word that means – you guessed it – “well.”

God has placed us on the riverbank, living in a well of God’s resources for a parched people. I think that makes at least three – God must be saying something!