Water

Saw their faith (2:5)

In 1887 Anne Sullivan was employed to teach a young girl, Helen Keller, who could neither see nor hear. Anne experimented with repeatedly spelling single words onto Helen's hand to give her the beginnings of a vocabulary. Helen managed to use this as a tool to label objects but did not understand it as a language for communication. Then one day Helen kept confusing cup and water and Anne, possibly in exasperation, took her to the pump. Helen takes up the story, 'She spelled w-a-t-e-r emphatically. I stood still, my whole body’s attention fixed on the motions of her fingers as the cool stream flowed over my hand. All at once there was a strange stir within me—a misty consciousness, a sense of something remembered. It was as if I had come back to life after being dead! That word “water” dropped into my mind like the sun in a frozen winter world. The world to which I awoke was still mysterious; but there were hope and love and God in it, and nothing else mattered. Is it not possible that our entrance into heaven may be like this experience of mine?'

Anne Sullivan's persistence led to Helen Keller's taste of heaven and her future life of activity, just as did the friends' persistence lead to the paralysed man's health. I doubt there are many joys that compare with bringing a friend to find and be found by Christ for the first time. May such joy be ours and often.