Image: children celebrating a new well provided by Living Water, https://www.livingwaterwells.org/
Restore to me the joy of thy salvation—Psalm 51:12.
With joy shall you draw water from the well of salvation—Isaiah 12:3.
I recently watched a stand-up comic (Randy Feltface, the puppet of stand-up comedy) do some crowd work. The writing that goes into the scripted bits of a stand-up act fascinates me. But the impromptu conversations called “crowd work” lose me when they devolve into mocking the audience for cheap laughs. But this conversation was interesting:
“And what do you do for a living ma’am?”
“I work at HEB.”
(Cheers.)
“Wait. What? What do you do? Why is everyone cheering? ‘H-E-V’?”
“H-E-B.”
The comic was still confused. Soon the entire room was yelling, “H-E-B! H-E-B! H-E-B!”
“Oh. H.E.B. Got it. And what is ‘HEB’?”
The crowd yells out, “a grocery store!”
The performer is astonished. “A grocery store?” He looks at the woman. “You mention that you work at a grocery store and the entire room applauds? Seriously? What kind of grocery store is this?”
Someone yells, “the best kind!”
“Are you kidding me? I have performed around the world, in cities all over the United States and everywhere else. I come to San Antonio and the crowd gets excited about a grocery store? Man! That’s crazy.”[1]
I laughed as I witnessed this exchange, and I thought about how good it feels to walk into HEB. I was there Sunday. In fact, there is no store I shop in more often. There have been weeks I stopped in seven days in a row. They have all the food you could ever imagine. And gas. And my prescriptions. Everything for pets. Plants. Lawn furniture. They have a smattering of hardware, tools, kitchen appliances, and household goods. It smells good. It is well lit and I know where things are (until the biennial shuffle that always make me hate the place for about six months). As I watched the crowd cheer for HEB, I realized I agreed with them. I do not like shopping, but I like HEB. It makes no sense. But it’s a great place and I literally feel joy when I walk in. I think I honestly do. I feel joy.
I’m sure HEB pays a cracker-jack staff to come up with the perfect layout, lighting, smells, and products. There is a science to the frictionless way the carts roll silently along the linoleum. Someone studied exactly which music to pipe in through the tiny speakers, a whisper of pop tunes to keep things feeling upbeat and hopeful. They know what time of day to brew coffee and bake bread and truck in fresh flowers and pull cookies, cakes, and pies from the ovens. Everything smells like delicious abundance, like holidays, like love and family and happiness. Millions have been spent to cultivate the perfect ambience.
But on a deeper, primal level, we shoppers remain hunters and gatherers. It feels good to put your hands on food and stash it in your cart. It feels good to provide for your family. It feels good to fill up the food cache, the meat locker, the egg basket, the fish box, the bread bin, the cheese cellar, the cracker barrel. It is a great feeling to have so much provision stored away that scarcity is not a threat. Doing without is not a threat.
That is one of the joys of salvation. Buying groceries at HEB gives us a chance to trade our money—our labor—for food. No one is going to go hungry. Such ‘food security’ equates to provision, to abundance, to the joy of salvation.
Isaiah compares salvation to a well from which we might draw joy.
If you have ever seen people who lack access to clean water, you can understand the joy of a deep well. Talk about provision! All the food in the world means nothing to a thirsty soul with nothing to drink.
The provision of food brings great joy and the provision of drink also brings great joy. Consequently, Jesus describes Himself as both the Bread of Life and Living Water. Jesus is essential. He is the food and water we need if we are going to survive, to thrive, to have joy. The salvation Jesus provides is a well of deep joy!
But there is more to the joy of salvation than the joy of provision. There is also the joy of rescue.
Salvation is a deep well of joy, joy created not only by a Savior who provides for all your needs, but by a Savior who rescues! See part two.
Dear God, we thank you for your provision! Thank you for meeting all our needs, both on earth and in heaven. Thank you for providing so much more than we need. Honestly, you give us so much, you bless us so deeply. Thank you for your compassion, your mercies, your kindness to us. Thank you for the way you do not give hesitantly, but you give lavishly. Thank you for your ‘reckless love’ that gives us so, so, so much more than we need. You are so good to us. You are a good, good Father. Thank you.
AΩ.
[1] Normally I might track down a video and replay it line-by-line in order to quote it accurately. In this case, I chose to paraphrase. The original, which includes foul language, can be seen at this link: https://www.google.com/search?q=crowd+work+heb+puppet+stand+up&oq=crowd+work+heb+puppet+stand+up&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIHCAEQIRigATIHCAIQIRigATIHCAMQIRigATIHCAQQIRigATIHCAUQIRigATIHCAYQIRirAtIBCjEzNDM0ajBqMTWoAgCwAgA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:058e3d1a,vid:lLbd5fpDhCo,st:0
Household Words: 