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Writer's pictureSally Bair

Eternal Perspectives: Cracked Pots Can't Hold Water



Have you ever tried drinking from a cup or container with holes or cracks? If so, you soon discovered that the container was worthless, and you lost out on your beverage. Therein lies a good lesson.


Eternal Perspectives by Sally Bair

Cracked Pots 

When I was young, some friends played a trick on me by giving me a glass of water with hidden cracks in it. When I tipped it up to drink, water spilled down my blouse. My friends laughed. It took a couple more sloppy tries before I caught on to the joke. 


I used a rain barrel to water my vegetable garden. Once, I accidentally left the attached hose open and lost all the collected water. 


It's not easy to drink from a cracked pot, and we cannot recover the lost rainwater from a leaky barrel. 


The Bible refers to broken vessels in a spiritual sense. "My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken Me, the spring of Living Water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water." (Jeremiah 2:13) 


Cisterns were commonly used in the Old Testament country of Judah to collect and store rainwater. Over time, the collected water became stagnant and impure, and the cisterns were prone to break and leak. 


Jeremiah proclaimed to the Judeans that not only did they forsake the Lord, the only One who could give them abundant life in the form of living water, but they also pursued idols and worldly pleasures. Thus, they lost their purpose and destiny as a redeemed people. Their lives became leaky vessels. Broken cisterns. Cracked pots.


We find the same kinds of brokenness today. Many try to fill their lives with wealth, power, popularity, and other things of the world—things that don’t last. When these become the focus of life, nothing remains but a cracked pot. We may think they will satisfy, but in time, they lose their appeal.


Choosing such broken cisterns is foolhardy. Drinking from a broken, leaky vessel is not easy, and it can be spiritually life-threatening. We may ask, am I drinking from cracked pots?


Such cracked pots can’t hold the things of the Lord but continually leak, depleting us of spiritual sustenance. Conversely, when we accept His living water, He stops the leaks. It’s then we begin to overflow with His love into the broken lives of others.  


O Lord, reveal to us the broken cisterns, the cracked pots in our lives. Give us the will to accept Jesus Christ as our Living Water and the strength to rid our lives of useless, spiritually draining cracked pots. In Jesus’ name, amen.


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