A Lady I Look Forward to Meeting

By Kathy McKinsey

The woman at the well from John chapter 4. I don’t just want to meet this lady. I want to sit down and have a conversation with her.

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According to verse 39, she convinced many in the town to come out and meet Jesus. How did she do that? What made her want to?

I’ve heard lessons on this passage many times. Did she come to the well when no one else was around? Was her reputation that bad?

She seemed to come up with a question or an argument for everything Jesus said. Was that to avoid talking about her own sin?

She was a talkative lady. Jesus asked if she’d give him a drink of water.

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Verses 9-11: So the Samaritan woman said to him, “How can you – a Jew – ask me, a Samaritan woman, for water to drink?” (For Jews use nothing in common with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, “If you had known the gift of God and who it is who said to you, ‘Give me some water to drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” “Sir,” the woman said to him, “you have no bucket and the well is deep; where then do you get this living water? (NET)

When Jesus offered her living water, she wanted to know how he’d get it, since he had nothing to draw water out with. She challenged him, asking if he thought he was greater than their father Jacob.

But she was willing to play his game. If he could give her enough water so she’d never have to come back to the well, she was willing.

Then Jesus started to dig deep into the woman’s own life.

Verses 16-18: He said to her, “Go call your husband and come back here.” The woman replied, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “Right you are when you said, ‘I have no husband,’ for you have had five husbands, and the man you are living with now is not your husband. This you said truthfully!”(NET)

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No, she didn’t want to talk about that. She turned it into a theological discussion.

Verses 19-20: The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you people say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” (NET)

Verses 25-26: The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (the one called Christ); “whenever he comes, he will tell us everything.” Jesus said to her, “I, the one speaking to you, am he.” (NET)

One thing I’ve heard taught about this woman sticks sharpest in my mind. She left her water jar and went back to town. The reason she’d come out in the first place. Something changed her.

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We know Jesus was tired. But something he did, something in the way he related to this woman gave her a new purpose.

Was it a kindness like she’d never seen before? Did she recognize that here was someone who cared for her more than she ever dreamed possible?

When Jesus told her he was the Messiah, she believed him, and she wanted to bring everyone she knew to meet him.

Father, open my eyes wider. Help me understand your love so much more clearly, and grasp it so close, that I forget about whatever else I want to do and run to share it with everyone I can. 

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