“Therefore with joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salvation.” (Isaiah 12:3). We are told that God loves us so much that He sent His son to save the world in general, and us in particular. We are told that we are created so that we might have joy. We are told that in the world we shall have tribulation, but in the Lord we shall have peace. But what about those times when we don’t feel God’s love? When we don’t feel saved? When we don’t feel joy or peace? God’s love is not dependent on our ability to feel it. How could it be? If God loved us with only as much love as we had the capacity to absorb or process, it would be a poor and pathetic drop compared to the infinite ocean of His real and actual love for us. The wells of Salvation run far, far deeper than any hole into which we might dig ourselves. We sometimes hold ourselves back from visiting the Wells of Salvation. We feel unworthy or resentful. We are like those children of Israel who have been bitten by the poisonous serpents and won’t look at the brazen serpent that we might be saved, and would most likely close our eyes shut tight and turn our heads even if Moses were to take the brazen serpent and wave it in front of our face. We hold back from the well, and then we wonder why we have no joy nor peace in our life. But maybe sometimes we really want to go to the well but we just can’t. We are like the invalid waiting by the pool of Bethesda for thirty eight years with no one to carry us to the water. If our lives are chaotic and filled with misery and pain beyond belief, it is nonetheless still true that we have joy. It may in the moment of our agony be stored in the Wells of Salvation rather than buoying up our hearts, but the fact that we are temporarily cut off from it in no way diminishes its reality. We can’t lose joy anymore than God can stop loving us or our Savior will give up on trying to save us. However hot the furnace of our affliction, however sore and hard to bear our afflictions, however dark the night of doubt and despair presses close and suffocating, the Wells of Salvation are still there. And whether our current circumstances permit us to walk breezily and effortlessly and unchallenged up to them, or if we must rather crawl on bloody hands and knees across thorns and thistles, when we have finally reached them we may still with joy draw water out of the wells of salvation. We can remind ourselves that God’s Love, and Jesus’s salvation, and a joy and peace that pass all understanding are real and eternally ours to have.
