The Woman at the Well

"Well" (cc) Neil, via Flikr

Don't you just love God's Word? I am so blessed to attend a church where the ministers listen to the leading of the Holy Spirit and teach from scriptures I've read and heard hundreds of times before -- but from a new perspective.

Take the Woman at the Well, for instance. I always connected with this story from a sense of being ashamed of the mistakes I've made in my life. If I had met Jesus at the well, what would he have told me about my life? Maybe I haven't had five husbands, but are my "sins" any smaller or greater than hers?

Sunday night I was given a new way to look at this story. What if... instead of pointing out the woman's sins, Jesus was actually pointing out her need?



There is an old saying "The universe abhors a vacuum" -- or, in other words, if there's a void, it's going to be filled with something. This woman had a need. She had a void, a deep longing within her soul. She tried to fill that longing with relationships with men. Over and over again she tried. But one after the other, she found each relationship left her unsatisfied still; left her thirsting.

"Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again: but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall given him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life."

~John 4:25-30

I always saw this as a story of salvation -- eternal salvation. And, it is. But, it's also a story of salvation from our earthly needs and wants. 

We keep trying to quench our thirst with our own water pot. We think we know what we need. We keep filling the void, filling the void, filling the void... But we can never seem to quench our thirst.

When Jesus offered this woman the living water -- a true relationship with the One God -- she left her water pot at the well and went to tell her friends and family. Such a small phrase. One I had never really noticed or paid attention to before. She left her water pot, her methods of trying to find satisfaction, when she discovered the living water.

Sin isn't the problem. It's a symptom. If you fill the void, you conquer the sin. 

My thanks to Susan Allen at Russellville Christian Center for this beautiful message.