At the Well {John 4}

I was thinking lately about this song that’s been playing in my mind for the past two months or so. And I’ve discovered how much we are alike, dear woman at the well, regardless of the 2000 years between us…

We are all prostitutes like you, unfaithful to our God, going for the things that can never satisfy. (I just said it like it is, didn’t I?)

But that wasn’t what was originally on my mind. Mainly, I was thinking about you as you made that trek out to the well that day: lonely, hot, waiting to be filled. Did you have a feeling something was going to happen that day? Or had that day been a particularly hard one? Maybe, hardly daring, your secrets fully visible to yourself, you wondered if you could meet this Man everyone had been talking about, if He’d be different than the other ones you’d known, because all your relationships until now had only brought more pain.

And why did you end up at the well that day in the afternoon, rather than in the evening? Did you just happen to suddenly run out of water right then… and realize later that it was such a miracle? Or did you just feel so restless, wanting to run away and get lost where you could be found? Most people believe you were wanting to avoid the pressing, wondering throng that would be there in the evening.

So you arrived at the well in the middle of the day. Maybe you turned your head a little, not wanting to face the strange Man who was sitting there, or maybe you glanced at Him out of the corner of your eye, simultaneously wondering what He was doing there and realizing, “He’s different.”

Then He saw you. He spoke to you.

He sees you and speaks to you. You, deserving nothing.

And the love in His eyes isn’t of the worthless, fleeting kind that you know. No, it’s so much stronger and deeper, and so amazing. And even though you can’t understand His words and can’t understand His love, something wells up deep inside of you, in a quiet, secret place you didn’t even know was there, and you know. You believe. And I wouldn’t doubt if you forgot your waterpot as you ran back to the city, shouting, “Come see the One who told me all I’ve ever done!”

Oh, such relentless, invincible love, that sets us free and leaves us thirsty no more.