Step Away From The Toilet

I have three dogs who compete for a drink from the toilet.  Two are tall enough that they can just put their head right in the pearly white porcelain bowl and lap up that delicious water to their hearts delight! My third dog, however, is a little Chi-weeny, and can’t reach the toilet bowl. His name is Cabo. Cabo will loiter under the two big dogs as they drink, eagerly waiting for them to pull their heads out of the toilet, (literally) and drip some delicious wet drops of Eau de Toilet Water on the bathroom floor, then he excitedly licks the drops off the floor.

Yogi is a 180 pound Bouvier des Flanders. Bouviers have a long beard, so, whatever water he doesn’t drink, gets pulled out of the porcelain pit by his beard. After Yogi’s drinking binges, he leaves a tell-tale trail of water droplets similar to the bread crumbs of Hansel and Gretel, throughout the entire house. This makes Cabo very, very happy, and he faithfully follows the wet trail, licking up every drop. If he gets really lucky, he can stand under Yogi and enjoy a complete shower courtesy the run-off  from Yogi’s beard! Remington, on the other hand, is a tidy toilet bowl drinker. He’s a German Short-haired Pointer, no beard, so when he drinks from the toilet, he comes out pretty dry, but he can drink practically the whole bowl by himself! The danger for Remington is that he gulps the water so fast that he chokes and hacks and coughs after binge drinking in the bathroom.

There’s always a dog drinking from the toilet. Always. I give them clean, fresh, cool water everyday. In fact, they have water in the back yard, and in the front yard, but they want to drink from the toilet. Why do they drink from the toilet? This is something I cannot answer, but I’d like to get to the bottom (pun intended) of it!

Do they not want to make the trip to the two outside water bowls? Are the bowls too far away? Do they not like using the doggy door to get to the water outside? Does the porcelain make the water colder? Fresher? Warmer? Do they prefer the toilet just because it’s forbidden? I need to know the answers to these questions!

If the seat is down, Yogi will stand there, in the bathroom, looking longingly at the toilet until someone comes and opens it for him! What is the draw? What draws them away from the clean, sparkling water that I serve them – to the toilet! Now, don’t get me wrong, I keep the toilets very clean, but I wouldn’t want to drink from them, and for the life of me, I cannot understand why my dogs continue to forsake the good, clean water I provide, for the water in the toilet. It makes me think of how Jesus Christ offers us “Living Water”, yet we so often choose our water from some proverbial toilet instead.

Living Water (Hebrew: מַֽיִם־חַיִּ֖ים‎ mayim-ḥayyîm; Greek: ὕδωρ ζῶν, hydōr zōn) is a biblical term which appears in both the Old and New Testaments. In the book of John, Chapter 4, Jesus offers Living Water to the woman at the well. Jesus was traveling through Samaria on His way back to Galilee. Jesus, who was tired and thirsty from His journey, sat down to rest by Jacob’s well. While resting at the well, a Samaritan woman came to draw water:

7 When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” 8 (His disciples had gone to the town to buy food.)
9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.)
10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked Him and He would have given you Living Water.”
11 “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this “Living Water”? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?”
13 Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
15 The woman said to Him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”

Jesus was talking about Living Water which will be a spring of water welling up to eternal life! Yet, we allow ourselves to be drawn away; away from the life-giving water to a place where we dip our heads and hearts into water that never quenches, cannot quench; yet we are drawn to it, and if the seat is down, we stand and stare, waiting for someone to come along and lift the seat for us. When it’s available, we drink it. “I’m not hurting anyone but myself!” we say, “No one will be hurt by my decision to drink from the toilet!” we say, but we are wrong. As we leave the toilet after bingeing on worthless water that cannot quench, we drip and drool all over those who are around us. Just like little Cabo gets dripped on by Yogi.  We leave a trail of our mess that causes others to slip and fall.

Come to think about it, we are much like Eve in the Garden of Eden, selfishly taking and eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, not realizing or caring about how it will impact others – in Eve’s case, the entire world! Who are we impacting? Our families and children? Friends? Co-workers? Neighbors? Who is being impacted every time we allow ourselves to be drawn away from the good, Living Water that God wants us to have? Who are we causing to slip and fall because of the slippery aftermath of our behavior? Who are we hurting when we forsake God’s clear and simple instruction to “eat of any tree in the garden” except the one in the bathroom? Step away from the toilet!

Back to the woman at the well. We don’t know what the “woman at the well’s” name was, so I’m going to call her Wellma for ease of writing and understanding. Wellma, in her  life time, drank from a lot of toilets, and I mean A LOT. Now, remember, she didn’t know it was Jesus who was asking her for water, she just knew that the guy sitting at the well was a Jew, and she was a Samaritan, and the two were like oil and vinegar. As their conversation went on, Jesus talked to her about the toilets she’d been drinking from, and directed her to Himself and the Living Water that comes from Him alone. Here’s how it went:

16 He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.”
17 “I have no husband,” she replied.
Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. 18 The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”
19 “Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. 20 Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”
21 “Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”
25 The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”
26 Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I am He.”

Wowza! Wellma just realized that the guy sitting next to her at Jacob’s well knew everything about her! He knew she was drinking from the toilet of immorality, He knew that she’d already had 5 husbands and was now shacking up with a sixth guy! Wellma left Jesus and went back to her people and told them everything Jesus had said to her. She told them that she thought the guy at the well might be the Christ!

Wellma’s people went to the well and saw Jesus, and they asked Him to stay. Jesus stayed another two days among the Samaritans, and Wellma, as well as many of her people believed that this man was indeed the Christ, the Savior of the World! They partook of the Living Water Jesus offered them! They put the toilet seat down and drank the Living Water!

Chuck Smith says this about that:

“Thirst Again“. An extremely profound statement: “Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again.”This statement should be written over every ambition you have. What is it that you are hoping to attain in life? What is it that you think will bring you satisfaction and fulfillment? What goals are you pressing toward? What possessions are you striving to acquire? Whatever it is, write over the top of it, “Drink of this water, but you will thirst again.” There is nothing in the material realm that will satisfy our spiritual thirst.

So step away from the toilet!