Today's Lesson from John 4:
10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” 11 The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water?" . . . Jesus said, "The water that I will give him will become a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” 15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”
She is a woman of the city. She has come to draw water alone - which is odd since drawing water was often a communal act done by women in groups. This has led many to speculate that she has not really come for water; but for men - that she is a prostitute.
Whether or not she is a prostitute, we know that her life is empty. She has no joy and she is racked with the guilt of what she has done and the shame of who she is. Her heart is hallow and empty and the pit of her life is deep and dark like the well there on he outskirts of town. In fact, when she speaks of the well, she uses a term for the cavernous pit of hell. It is a metaphor for her own life.
He sticks with the metaphor but changes the imagery. He does not speak of a well but rather a spring - a spring bubbling and alive. Jesus is describing a whole new way of life - a life full and not empty, overflowing and not dried out. It is an image Jesus is giving this woman of her still possible future - no longer stuck in the pit of hell, but alive with the spring of abundant life.
No matter how dark, empty, and alone you may feel, God wants to change the metaphor. God wants to turn your hallow pit into a bubbling spring. And God can do it, if you let Him. All you really have to do is say what this woman at the well said, “Sir, give me this water . . ."
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