DAY TWENTY-FIVE | JOHN 4:8-26 by Abigail
Soon a Samaritan woman came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink of water.” Surprised, she said, “Why would a Jewish man ask a Samaritan woman for a drink of water?”
Jesus replied, “If you only knew who I am and the gift that God wants to give you—you’d ask me for a drink, and I would give to you living water.”
The woman replied, “But sir, you don’t even have a bucket and this well is very deep. So where do you find this ‘living water’? Do you really think that you are greater than our ancestor Jacob who dug this well and drank from it himself, along with his children and livestock?”
Jesus answered, “If you drink from Jacob’s well you’ll be thirsty again and again, but if anyone drinks the living water I give them, they will never thirst again and will be forever satisfied! For when you drink the water I give you it becomes a gushing fountain of the Holy Spirit, springing up and flooding you with endless life!”
The woman replied, “Let me drink that water so I’ll never be thirsty again and won’t have to come back here to draw water.”
Jesus said, “Go get your husband and bring him back here.”
“But I’m not married,” the woman answered.
“That’s true,” Jesus said, “for you’ve been married five times and now you’re living with a man who is not your husband. You have told the truth.”
The woman said, “You must be a prophet! So tell me this: Why do our fathers worship God here on this nearby mountain, but your people teach that Jerusalem is the place where we must worship. Which is right?”
Jesus responded, “Believe me, dear woman, the time has come when you won’t worship the Father on a mountain nor in Jerusalem, but in your heart. Your people don’t really know the One they worship. We Jews worship out of our experience, for it’s from the Jews that salvation is made available.
From here on, worshiping the Father will not be a matter of the right place but with the right heart. For God is a Spirit, and he longs to have sincere worshipers who worship and adore him in the realm of the Spirit and in truth.”
The woman said, “This is all so confusing, but I do know that the Anointed One is coming—the true Messiah. And when he comes, he will tell us everything we need to know.”
Jesus said to her, “You don’t have to wait any longer, the Anointed One is here speaking with you—I am the One you’re looking for.”
SPLINTERS
This story has been one of my favorites for a while because of the way that Jesus was interacting with this Samaritan woman. The Samaritans were half Jew and half Gentile, and that made them outcasts to pretty much everyone. Jewish men didn’t really talk to Samaritans at all, and definitely not a Samaritan woman. But Jesus challenged the culture boundaries by engaging with this outcast, and it makes me think about how we are called to do the same thing.
This really means a lot to me because of the culture that we live in. In recent years, our world has been so torn and divided over racial conflicts and the unjust treatment of the cultural outcasts.
This passage has given me such a solid foundation of how I should live. Especially when there is peer pressure to treat others poorly because they are different or on the outside of society.
I love the way that Jesus talks and loves this woman, even in just the simplicity of a request for water. She seemed so stunned that this Jewish man would say anything to her at all. Jesus wanted to go a little deeper than a conversation just about normal water and speak to her about things that really mattered to her.
He was laying aside His reputation to engage with this woman that had a hard life and a questionable reputation. In the everyday, Jesus took this opportunity to love this woman and be kind. He invites us to do the same thing in our everyday lives as well.
As I was writing this story, I was really thinking about this one part when the woman asks Jesus what He thought was the right place to pray. I didn’t really understand why that sentence was there, so I asked Dad about it. I mean, why in the world would someone who had just gotten a prophetic word start talking about a strange theological question?
My dad’s answer to my confusion was that as Jesus started to speak about her heart, she changed the subject and started talking about the religious details to distract the conversation from going deeper. That really got my attention. I was confronted by many a conversation with Jesus, where He would try to bring up something about my heart and I would start to talk about details to distract myself from the pain.
That reminded me of something that happened when I was 4. I was playing with some of the people who were at a summer internship that my dad was leading.
And I got a REALLY bad splinter, I mean bad. They took me to my mom and dad to try to get this horrible piece of wood out of my foot. It was so bad it took both parents to get it out, and it was still a long process.
Crying from pain, my four-year-old self asked, “Daddy, why did God make splinters?”. In answer he said, “He didn’t. They’re just a broken piece of something else. And if we don’t get the splinter out, it will get infected.”
A lot of times, Jesus will try to take out splinter that I have gotten in my heart, and I have tried to avoid it with details or rabbit trails.
This story about the splinter, and the one about the woman at the well is really good for me. The splinter, because recently Jesus has been doing this a lot with me, and I have been asking Him why it hurts so bad. His answer has been, “Because it’s gotten infected.”
The story of the Woman at the Well is important to me because of the recent heart pain that I’ve had. I have been wanting to have a lot of conversations about the details with Jesus to distract myself from the pain of the infection. In His patience, He answers them. Then when I am ready, He continues to gently pull out that old and gross splinter of pain and hurt and heal the dirty infection.
My prayer is that in this gentle process of healing, Jesus’s invitation to our hearts to come into a place of everyday worship and relationship with Him will be received. I also pray that we can allow ourselves to open up the areas where we need Him to come and heal us.
JOURNALING QUESTIONS // LINK TO PLAYLIST
Examine – How would you describe what this passage reveals about the life of Jesus?
MindShift – Is there anything about what you read in this passage that challenges the way you think about what it means to follow Jesus?
Prayer Focus – Is there any prayer that you can pray to co-operate with Holy Spirit to see your mind renewed to become more like Jesus?
