Hidden Rivers, Deeper Thirst

What if the driest place you can imagine is sitting on a secret ocean of supply? We open the morning with a startling fact: space shuttle radar mapped ancient lakes and riverbeds beneath the Sahara, revealing reservoirs of freshwater just a few feet below the sand. That image becomes our framework for understanding spiritual thirst—how life at the surface can feel parched while a deeper source waits to be tapped.
From there, we step into the scene at a well in Samaria, where Jesus speaks about living water that satisfies at the core of who we are. The contrast is striking: bucket water quenches for a moment; living water becomes a spring within, steady and renewing. We talk about the pressure of daily demands, how urgency pretends to be essential, and why the most important resources often hide beneath routine, hurry, and noise.

If your day feels like a desert, bring a shovel, not a shrug. Tune in for a short, focused reset that blends surprising science, timeless scripture, and real-life practices to help you find the spring beneath your steps. If this encouraged you, share it with a friend, subscribe for weekday starts, and leave a review to help others find the show. Where will you dig deeper today?

Chapters

• 0:10 Welcome And Today’s Focus
• 0:34 Sahara Scale And Dryness
• 0:59 Space Shuttle Discovers Buried Waters
• 2:22 The Samaritan Woman And Living Water
• 3:33 Hidden Essentials And True Source
• 5:40 Closing And Daily Invitation

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:10

Good morning and welcome to Starting Right. I am Danny Mack, and I'm going to be here every Monday to Friday to help you get a great start to your day. So grab your cup of coffee, sit back and relax for the next five minutes as I help you start your day by starting right. Most of us are aware that the largest hot desert in the world is the Sahara. But I didn't know it was nine point two million square kilometers. I mean that's a big place. Did you know that it gets less than three inches of rain every year? Three inches. Man, we can get that here in a couple of days, but they're three inches every year, and that's on a good year. In nineteen ninety three there was an amazing discovery made beneath the Sahara Desert. In that year, one of the missions of the Space Shuttle Columbia was to map out the Sahara Desert using some new radar imagery. And what they found absolutely astounded the scientists. The images of the Sahara showed lake beds and riverbeds that were buried beneath the sand. In fact, there were twenty-six distinct lake beds plus a myriad of riverbeds that showed that water had flowed through this area in vast quantities at some point in time in history. Soon after this discovery was made, a professor Donald Johnson from the University of Illinois took a team out to the desert, and going to one of the exact spots where the space shuttle had seen evidence of a riverbed, they began to dig just using shovels and picks. They went down four feet into the sand and they came across solid evidence that the river had indeed been there. They continued to dig down further, and another four feet below that, they discovered water. Further studies have shown that buried beneath the Sahara Desert today, there are vast quantities of water, fresh water. In fact, there's enough fresh water underneath the Sahara Desert that it can supply the needs for everybody in the northern half of Africa for years and nobody knew it was there. In the book of John, there's the story of a Samaritan woman who went to a well to get some water. She traveled a long distance. It had been a very difficult trip, and she had to go at an odd time of the day. It was probably the hottest time of the day, because she couldn't go at the regular time, first thing in the morning, because the Jewish women were going to get water then, and Jews and Samaritans did not get along, and they certainly wouldn't associate with each other. While she was there, Jesus came along and he said to her, Give me something to drink. She said, You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for something to drink? Jesus looked at her and said, If you knew the gift of God and who it was that asked you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water. She looked at him again and said, Sir, you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Jesus answered her and said, Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again. 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. She said, Sir, give me this water so that I won't be thirsty. Let's go back out to the Sahara just for a moment. Think of how many people died on the Sahara for lack of water. Yet what the scientists have now found is not too far below the surface, there's an abundance of water. They just didn't know it was there. They just couldn't see it. Water is essential for life. And the Samaritan woman came to the well looking for water so that she and her family could live. Yet Jesus said, This water is insignificant compared to the water that I can give you. What I have for you you can't see. It seems hidden to you right now. The water that I can give you is life that goes beyond anything that you can imagine. In John chapter seven, verse thirty-seven, Jesus stood and shouted to the crowds, Anyone who is thirsty may come to me. Anyone who believes in me may come and drink. For the scriptures declare rivers of living water will flow from his heart. Sometimes the greatest and most important essentials in life are not the ones that we think they are. They're not the ones that are easily seen or come to mind the most quickly. But sometimes the true essentials in life are the things that seem hidden, and ultimately can only be supplied by God Himself. So we need to make sure that we maintain our focus on what really is important, where we are really getting fed from, from the Word of God, from the presence of God in our lives, that we're not being distracted by things that we cannot see, we're not being stressed out by the things we cannot see, but we're putting our faith and our trust in God that He has got everything for us that we need. So if we find ourselves in a dry and desert place in our lives, it doesn't mean that God's gone away or that he's not with us. What it usually means is that we need to dig in, we need to dig deeper, dig deeper into his word, dig deeper into our prayer life, to dig into what we know is true and believe it and to hang on to it, and then we will discover again the wonderful, refreshing Spirit of God that will help us and guide us when we need it the most. Have a great day, my friends. We'll talk again tomorrow. Thank you for listening today. And I invite you to join me Monday to Friday right here on Starting Right with Danny Mack.