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Thanks so much for for these wonderful, well-written comments. I’m a big Interpreter fan due to the outstanding scholarship. My faith is always boosted.
Thank you for your interesting insights. It reminds me of one of the most powerful aspects of fast Sunday: the sobering reality of how dependent our physical bodies are on food and water (particularly water). After a day of fasting, that first drink of cold water is truly sublime. Although these experiences are simple, to me they are symbolic, a reminder that our spirits are refreshed, renewed, and built by the living water, Jesus Christ. To think you can go without, or to outright refuse to drink, spells dehydration and spiritual death.
For one such as me, nearing the closing cat in what has been a wonderful drama, filled with ups and downs, but sustained by a hope resting on the victory won by God in Jesus Christ over all forms of death, Professor Peterson’s beautifully written sermon on the remarkably powerful metaphor, grounded, as he points out, in a reality present even now our world filled with water in plastic to keep up from fainting on a hot and humid day, both the reality of water (living water or life-giving water) is for me a way of comprehending the miracle of life, even the fullness of life, offered freely by God to all of us.
I wish I had the literary and scholarly gifts to have fashion such a sermon.