On the last day of the festival, the great day, while Jesus was standing there, he cried out, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, ‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.'” Now he said this about the Spirit, which believers in him were to receive. (John 7:37-39)
“I knew enough Greek to know that the word translated “heart” literally meant guts, the viscera, the womb. The old translation “belly” conveys the earthiness of the original. The home of the Spirit is not in the intellect, the realm of concepts and ideas, not in a refined interior sanctum of spirituality, but in the guts, the deep core where our passions have their spring, the place of conflict, confusion, vulnerability, and desire.”
–Martin L. Smith, A Season for the Spirit, p. 16
