Our Collective Wells Need You | Monday Invocation
“Lent is a season of trusting God enough to take one honest drink and daring to pour out what we have for someone else.”
Dr. Matthew White
During recent protest waves, mutual aid has (and has always) looked like handing out water bottles and basic supplies. In the streets, passing water is an act of community care and organizing, a quiet but essential part of resistance. When police smash donated water, everyone understands it as an attack on our ability to keep going. Lent can echo that work: a nourishing season to practice sharing what we have so nobody faints on the way.
Water is universal, simple, and essential; our bodies and our movements cannot live without it. In Exodus, the people are thirsty in the wilderness and terrified that God has abandoned them. “Is the Lord among us or not?” they ask. God answers with water from the most unlikely place: an actual rock. The miracle is not one heroic person holding it together; it’s enough water for everyone.
In John 4, a Samaritan woman walks to the well at noon, carrying more than just an empty jar. She carries the weight of other people’s whispers, the quiet calculations of who is clean enough, straight enough, respectable enough to be seen. Many in this community have endured that walk and the choice to come when others won’t see us, or not to come at all. Jesus meets her there, names her story without weaponizing it, and offers living water for the trust of one honest drink. She becomes an evangelist and organizer of her community, turning private shame into a public invitation.
Romans 5 says God’s love has been “poured into our hearts,” even as we suffer. Like water, that love is not a reward for finally being less thirsty, but a presence that can grow endurance, character, and hope in the very places we were sure were too dry to live. Our suffering and thirst can become the ground where relational and communal peace slowly takes root.
Lent is a season of trusting God enough to take one honest drink and daring to pour out what we have for someone else. For some of us, that will mean time and attention; for others, money or mutual aid; for many of us, it will mean offering our stories to someone still walking to the well alone at noon. Let fasting look like refusing to drink from shame-wells that never satisfy, and choosing instead to become part of how God’s living water is shared. Go ahead; bring the water. Our collective wells need you.
Join a Lenten Community Group!
Are you looking to join a weekly group discussing the scripture passages surrounding Lent this year? Join one of our Lenten Reflections Community Groups! We have 3 groups to choose from, which includes a group for Deconstructing Lent. You can see more information and sign up at the link below!
