Before me lay a vast desert. How long it had been since that wilderness had last seen rain, I could not say. Three years perhaps, or four. Long fissures reached like fingers across the clay-baked expanse. A few sun-scorched crags were the jealous residents of that wasteland. Allowing no creatures, no living things to share their kingdom, they were disturbed only by a light sand, swept by a fiery wind.

As I watched, the silence was broken by a deliberate beat, amplified by the harsh serenity of that wilderness. A legion of men emerged in the distance, marching toward me. Fifty men abreast, they passed not a hundred feet from where I sat in the shade of a boulder. Heads bowed, they trudged by, hooded in dusty brown robes that covered them down to their disheveled sandals. There seemed no end to the column; it stretched for miles, as far as I could see.

I drew closer and fell in the line next to a broad-shouldered man with a plodding step. He did not look at me exactly, but cocked his head slightly, revealing a bronzed face with a gritty countenance. The grizzled strands that escaped from his brown hood matched the stippled growth on his cheeks. Beads of sweat clung to his upper lip, occasionally brushed away by a rough tongue. I greeted him warmly, and was rewarded with a husky grunt.

“Tell me, sir, what is this company?”

“We are marching,” he answered.

“To where?”

“To the End.”

“To the End of What?”

“To the End of Man.” He seemed well satisfied by his answer, and silently trudged on, ignoring my inquisitive glance.

Undaunted, I renewed my query. “Why do you march?”

“It is our duty.”

“To whom?”

“To ourselves.”

This line of questioning bearing even less fruit than the last, I asked him what would become of Them. “What will you do when you get to the End?”

He seemed surprised at this, and retorted, “The End is the End. There is Nothing Else.”

I persisted, “There must be Something at the End.”

For the first time, the traveler turned toward me with a scowl. “There is Nothing Else,” he repeated. “We are Man. It is Enough.”

As he turned back to the road, he pulled from his mouth a small stone, no more than a pebble. Inspecting it, he smacked his lips twice, than placed it back in his mouth, sucking furiously. As I glanced around, I noticed a similar bulge in the mouths of many of the other pilgrims. I inquired of my guide as to its purpose.

The answer was obvious enough to him. “It sustains me,” he retorted with an especially loud smack. “But it cannot avail much against this heat, even for an hour.”

He pulled the stone from his mouth only to glare at me once more. “It is Enough,” he snapped, and popped the stone back into his mouth.

At this, we trudged on in silence for some time. Presently, my eyes were drawn to a small party on the edge of the endless column. Their step was lighter, their heads higher, than their comrades. Some of them peered about restlessly, scanning the desert for… Something.

I inquired about them. “They are the Seekers. Fools, all of them.”

“Why fools?” I asked. “What do they seek?”

The traveler snorted. “They search for More. A waste of time.”

“A waste?”

 “Tried it once myself, when I was young; they will never find It. We do not need More. We have Enough. It does not help our Progress.”

At once, a cry rang up from the Seekers.  As one, they rushed toward a boulder set apart from the path the men followed. Shading my eyes against the sun, I could make out the glimmer of a small creek running out from the base of the boulder, bubbling from some unseen spring deep in the ground.

One man collared a young Seeker as he ran by. “Where do you think you’re going, little halfwit?”

“Oh it is wonderful, sir! They have found More!”

His tormentor gave his arm a rude twist. “Bah! Do not waste yourself chasing such dreams! It is nothing but a mirage. You’ll stay right here. Don’t scorn your fellow Man; you’re no better than the rest of us.”

For one brief instant, the young man glared back defiantly. But in the next moment, his resolve seemed to crumple; with a final doleful glance at the other Seekers, he bowed his head and resumed his March.

I watched the other Seekers as they excitedly gathered the water, some drinking deeply, others filling a waterskin and running back to the column to share a fortune with their parched comrades. One returned ahead of the rest, not even pausing to quench his own thirst in his haste to give refreshment to another. He grabbed the first traveler he met and pressed the flask to the man’s lips. “Drink, brother!” he cried.

But his charity was unwelcome; I stared in disbelief as the man shoved the altruist to the ground, spilling his prize on the arid earth. “I am no brother of yours,” he returned. “And I have no need of your pity.”

The Seeker was aghast. “But only the water will fill you! What you have will never satisfy!”

“I daresay that’s as may be,” the man replied, as he drew his precious pebble from between his lips. “But this,” he gestured. “This, is Mine. Do whatever you like for yourself. But as for me, I have Enough.”

Disregarding the Seeker’s pleas and tears, he hurried toward the middle of the column, burying himself deep among his fellows.

By now, all of the other Seekers were returning with water. They ran to the front of the column, and shouted so fervently that the entire horde came to a halt. “We have found it!” they exclaimed. “Drink, and live!”

Their shouts were met with silence by the stoic pilgrims. Finally, one bolder than the rest came forward. Without a word, he accepted a flask from one of the Seekers and turned to face the column, raising it high. He paused briefly. Then, stone-faced, he slowly poured the water onto the ground. Turning to the Seekers, he growled, “Look here. We don’t need your new ideas.”

“No we don’t!” echoed the pilgrims.

“We can look out for ourselves. Man has always marched on, and so He will march to the End. If you are not with us, you are against us. Now stand aside. Do not hinder our Progress!”

A wave of fury rushed over the pilgrims, the first show of sentiment that I had seen from the masses.  Once again, the swarm pressed forward.

The Seekers stood valiantly in the path, pleading with all those who rushed past, until, one by one, they all fell, pushed to the cracking clay by travelers who would not be turned aside from their goal. Row after row of pilgrims trudged on, heedless of the groans of their fallen comrades whom they now trampled into the dust.

As the last pairs of sandals pressed on, leaving behind scores of broken bodies, order was at last restored to the column.

One traveler turned to take one last glance at a shattered jug, its spilled prize still running along a small fault in the earth. Removing a pebble from his mouth, he licked his lips. A moment later, he replaced the pebble, turned, and was gone. Onward marched Man.

“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.”  (John 4:10)