Just a woman at the well
She was just an ordinary woman sitting by a well in Samaria, and little did she know the life changing moment she was about to encounter, as Jesus simply asked her for a drink. This was a woman that felt ashamed, she felt used, and forgotten. She probably felt like she was never enough for anyone. Historically those things were all probably true for the time period she was in, she was a Samaritan woman that had already had five husbands and living with another. I think as women we can all relate to having some kind of traumatic past of being hurt by men, not fitting in, or being rejected. I feel like I have spent a lot of my life wanting to find real love. To find a husband that truly adored me and treated me as such. I think I wanted it so bad in my twenties that I was virtually obsessed with the idea. I wasn’t even picking people based on anything other than how sweet or infatuated they seemed in the beginning. Spoiler alert: that didn’t work out well, people change. Love bombing is a real thing, people aren’t always what they seem at first, and actions do in fact eventually speak a lot louder than words. So I was left feeling exactly like her.. ashamed of my past, used by the men I let in to my life, and like I was never going to be enough for any one.
Cue Jesus.
Lets set the scene from her point of view. She minding her business going to draw water from the well. She’s probably had a terrible day (from my experience this is specifically Jesus’s favorite time to make him self known) She’s probably tired, feeling drained. She’s probably anxiously thinking of her life and feeling as though its never going to get any better than this. She probably felt stuck and ashamed. As she approached the well, there was a man. He asked her “Will you give me a drink?” I can kinda gather where her mind had been through that day by how quick her response of shame and rejection was “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” Then Jesus responds with “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.” You know she had to be confused and thrown completely off, wondering who is this man and what is he talking about living water. She asks him where she can find this living water. She asks him who he is and if he is greater than “our father Jacob” who had given them the well and drank from it.
Then the moment happens, and Jesus in all his Glory and Grace says, “ Everyone who drinks 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” Of course she wanted to never thirst again, to never have to come and draw from the well again. It was noon the hottest part of the day and she was a social outcast that didn’t want to be seen out. As she asked him where she could find this water, he instead told her to go find her husband and come back. She didn’t have a husband tho. Jesus then said “ You are right when you say you have no husband. You have had five husbands, and the man you have now is not your husband. What you have said is quite true” I know the look on her face must have been priceless. I probably would have fell over in shock that this random man is not only talking to me but calling me out as well. Calling me out on all my shame and regret. She had to have thought how does this man know me so well. Realizing he is a prophet of some kind. As Jesus revealed to her that he is The Messiah. That he was the one that had come to explain it all to them. She quickly became over joyed and ready to tell everyone of her encounter.
In her revelation realizing that this living water He is speaking of is Him. The water she had been drinking was finding her identity in men. The water from the well can be all sorts of things for us. It can be the simplest of things we chase after trying to fill the void or try to fill whole. Trying to feel like we have finally made it. Is it the biggest nicest house or car? Is it being popular and acceptance from the people around us? Is it the perfect amount of kids or the perfect husband, that’s finally going to make us feel like we did it, that we are finally happy and no longer broken?
As Jesus tells us the answer is no, he is the Living Water. When the body gets dehydrated the mind will start to convince itself that it sees things, mirages, its just right there, a creek to drink from that will save you. Your mind will let you believe that something fake and empty is the way to Life. Thats what all of these things we fill our life with thinking it will satisfy us are, mirages.
The only true source for life is through Jesus Christ. He is our living water. A relationship with him is the all access pass to finally feeling whole, to finally feeling accepted and unashamed. Jesus specifically took the path thru the town of Sychar for this woman. He knew she needed him. He knew how broken she was.
He knew she needed to be saved, So he made a special trip just for her.
And he would do the same for me, and for you.
We are all just a woman at a well.. and we ARE ENOUGH to Jesus Christ.