2 Peter 2:17-22 These are wells without water, clouds that are carried with a tempest; to whom the mist of darkness is reserved for ever.… Water! How precious it is! Because God has given it to us so plentifully, we are apt to underestimate its worth. Were we tormented with thirst in the desert, we could consider water a priceless boon. In the East wells of water were very precious. Passing through the desert, the traveller would alight at one with joy, quaff the cooling draught, and then refreshed pursue his onward way. "Wells without water." Travellers in Eastern climes have often come across them. Hot and weary, they have gone with anticipative joy, only to be disappointed at finding parched emptiness. In passing through life's wilderness, have we not often come across "wells without water"? In the life-endeavour have we not often been disappointed? How many enter into business and anticipate success? They work with a will. But their efforts have all been "wells without water"! Others, again, have succeeded in business. But the dark shadow is there; and, so far as happiness is concerned, successful business men have found that mere earthly possessions have proved "wells without water." What a desire some persons have to be known! The essential characteristic of their existence is to be prominent. But in mere fame there is little or no satisfaction. Scotland was singing in her crowded towns and in her bonny glens the songs of her favourite poet, Burns, while he wrote as he lay in his last illness, not in the flight of poetic genius, but in the uncoloured utterance of homely prose — "I have known existence of late only by the presence of the heavy hand of sickness, and have counted time by the repercussions of pain." Then followed these words of anguish: "I close my eyes in misery, and open them without hope." When Dr. Johnson finished his dictionary, the more particular literary effort of his life, the Earl of Chesterfield offered that patronage to the completed work which he had refused to the struggling writer. Dr. Johnson replied: "The notice which you have taken of my labours has been delayed till I am indifferent and cannot enjoy it; till I am solitary and cannot impart it; till I am known and do not want it." The mere notice of the titled great, earthly reputation, worldly fame, these are but empty wells that mock the thirsty wanderer through the desert — "wells without water"! Some may say we do not aspire to fame. True, but is not excitement sought in other ways? Is happiness being sought in the attractions of society, or in any of the numerous vain amusements of the world? In all walks of life, in all the varied paths of the journey, we find "empty wells." They are on all sides of us. We see persons standing, thirsting, and unable to gratify their thirst, looking, with disappointment written on their careworn faces, into "wells without water." You have met with individuals cold, hard, selfish. They live merely for themselves. They have the human head, but the statue's heart. No word of sympathy escapes their lips, no look of pity comes from their cold eyes. To make appeals to them is like "dropping buckets into empty wells," which would certainly grow old in drawing nothing up! Then there are some who attempt to build wells. They dig deep. They pile one charitable action upon another. They exercise the greatest self-denial in carrying on their task, and when it is done they find their labour in vain. No man's thirst is slaked; it may be an elaborate work, but it is a piece of beautiful emptiness — one of the" wells without water." There is a well of living water. With joy the pilgrim can drink from the well of salvation, a well where the thirsty can drink to their heart's content, and thirst no more for streams that are impure. (J. P. Hutchinson.) Parallel Verses KJV: These are wells without water, clouds that are carried with a tempest; to whom the mist of darkness is reserved for ever. |
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