July 12

The Woman at the Well

                A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.”  (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.)  The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”  The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”  Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come back.”  The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!”

John 4:7-18

             The reality of this passage landed for me when I was in college, leading Vacation Bible Schools in the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico.  I would be carrying our filled 5 gallon water jugs as we walked from our homes to the church in a climate that hit triple digits in both heat and humidity.  No one else would be out on the streets because everyone knew that the heat of the mid-day sun was the worst time to work…except for the crazy visitors.

            It was noon when the woman visited the well.  Everyone else drew water early in the morning when it was cool.  She came in the hottest part of the day.  Even though the work of drawing and carrying water would be harder and more miserable, she saw that as a better experience than being around all the other women of the village.  The judgmental glances, whispers and open hostility were more than she wanted to deal with every morning.  Even if the work was hard and she was lonely, at least she could enjoy the quiet.

            Today would not be quiet.  Jesus approached her, ignoring all social customs, asked for water and then would not stop talking with her.  He was not quite confrontational, but He kept answering questions that she had not asked.  He talked about living water that would never go away and that sounded like a good deal to her.  Never having to come to the well again?  That would make life significantly easier.

            The Jesus asked her to bring her husband.  Her heart sank and a lump formed in her throat.  Usually men were only interested in one thing when they asked her that.  But if it would free her from daily visits to this well, she would play along.  So she responded truthfully and held her breath for what would come next.  She had no idea.

            Jesus was not there to use the woman, he was there to heal her.  He laid out the secrets that she hid and the shame that she carried around.  The women of her community may have hated her.  The men may have looked to use and discard her.  But God saw his beloved daughter and longed for her to be whole once again.

            Some of us try to hide the mistakes we have made or the hurts that we have endured.  Some of us try to hide the fears and insecurities that we have.  Some of us try to hide the fact that we have special needs children.  We organize our lives so that we only show the outside world what we want them to see, even if that means we add extra burden and strain onto our lives.  We carry the wounds from our past and we carry the shame of our failures because we don’t know what else to do with them.  And we endure and we persevere because the only other option is giving up and we have our children who need us to not give up.

            And then Jesus comes along.  And He says that those mistakes and those failures and those wrongs that have been done to us…we do not have to carry them any more.  We do not have to work to hide them because He can carry them for us.  Those wounds do not make us unloveable, they allow us to share a deeper love with our Creator for He is the Great Healer.

            Our life is hard.  We need not make it harder by carrying the shame of past wounds.  Jesus spoke with the woman at the well and she was transformed.  Imagine what He could do for us. 

           

A moment to reflect:

What failures and past hurts do you carry with you each day?  Give those to Jesus today and see what He does.