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.
But there is more to the joy of salvation than the joy of provision. There is also the joy of rescue.
Have you ever faced death? Stood on a cliff and felt the danger in slippery gravel or a gust of wind? Have you looked in the face of a mad dog or a dangerous wild animal? Narrowly escaped a terrible car accident? Or worse, faced down an angry and dangerous man, perhaps one brandishing a weapon? Maybe you have suffered an illness or an injury that would have taken you out but for the healing hand of God and the intervention of modern medicine. If so, you understand something of salvation. Salvation is rescue. You have been rescued. In 2023, my brother was rescued—saved—from a case of double pneumonia that nearly killed him. In 1997, I survived a car accident witnesses considered unsurvivable. I was rescued. Saved.
A few years ago while stopped at a red light, I heard popping noises and realized I was in the middle of a shootout. People were running between cars firing guns and using the vehicles to shield themselves from bullets. There were shooters in front of my truck and shooters behind. Suddenly I realized just how thin the sheet metal sides of a pickup truck really are. But I was rescued. I was saved.
Realizing what was happening, drivers ignored the red light and began darting across the traffic on Westheimer Road—a six-lane street so heavily traveled it has its own Wikipedia page. I did the same without hesitation. I was interested in justice, in identifying the shooters, in doing my part to assist law enforcement. But I was more interested in not making my children orphans.[2]
There is joy in abundance. But oh, there is joy in rescue! Salvation is both.
When David commits the most destructive sins of his life, he prays, “restore to me the joy of your salvation.” David knows he is going to heaven. He knows he is forgiven. But he is filled with remorse and regret and pain and needs joy. Sinners need the joy of salvation.
When we sin, we need our joy to be restored. We need the joy of provision and the joy of rescue.
Isaiah knows this joy. Isaiah says:
“God is my salvation. I will trust and not be afraid … He is my strength and my song and He has become my salvation [my rescue and provision]. Therefore, with joy shall you draw water from the well of salvation” Isaiah 12:2-3.
Is God your rescue? Sure, He is your provision. He gives you life and food and abundance. “In Him we live and move and have our being” Acts 17:28. God provides for everyone. But have you given God your life? Have you accepted His free gift of rescue, eternal rescue? Give your heart to Jesus. Then you will discover true joy, a joy like nothing else. A joy that is deeper than the deepest well. The joy of salvation is a joy that has no end.
“With joy shall you draw water from the well of salvation” Isaiah 12:3.
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
[2] By the way, this was not a case of being on the wrong side of town after dark. The gunplay happened around three o’clock on a Sunday afternoon. I had just left Mod Pizza and was across the street from Panera Bread. Based on what my friends and I could discover later, including the police activity records available online, no one was injured.
Household Words: 