We were meeting to talk about web design. I took a drink of water.

“So you drinking water now?” Kim asked.

“It’s a cool bottle,” Kiley said.

Kiley got it right. She usually does. She understands design.

The bottle is a promo piece from our insurance company, given away at a conference. Since I got it, I’ve been drinking four bottles a day. I know there are arguments about how much water to drink, but I’m drinking more than I was before. And it hasn’t hurt me.

I’d love to say that there are good reasons, but Kiley is right. The bottle is a cool bottle, more fun than a plastic glass or a generic bottle.

I assumed that this story would become a metaphor. It had to be connected to the living water that Jesus promised to give to the woman at the well. It had to be connected to the living water Jesus offered when he called to the temple crowd. It had to link somehow to the water and thirst thread that runs through Isaiah 44 (“water on thirsty land”) and 55 (“Everyone who is thirsty, come to the waters”) and 58 (“you will be like a spring of water whose waters do not fail”). I read through all of those, looking for the connection to my new-found willingness to drink water, now that I have found the right bottle.

I wasn’t willing to make a cliche connection, that Jesus is a well-designed water bottle. Or that we need to take the stories of Jesus and put them in attractive forms so people will drink more.

Then I finally understood. For me, metaphors reflect a thirst in my mind and heart for meaning. Today, my thirst for understanding took my soul through a sprinkler, then my heart straight to the Spring.