But looking to our own wells and drawing our own water is never going to satisfy our thirst for righteousness. “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again,” because we can never satisfy God’s demand of perfection. We are good at covering up sin, explaining the reasons for sin, giving excuses for sin, but we cannot eliminate sin, because everything we do is tainted with sin. And so when we turn to ourselves or any other human effort to deal with sin, it’s like trying to satisfy our thirst with salt water; it seems to fill us up for a while and satisfy us but in the end it only leaves us more thirsty. We need pure water. We need the Living Water. And so Jesus comes and sits at our well again, sits down next to us and says, “If you knew the gift of God, … you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water” (St John 4:10).