Daily Lesson for March 2, 2015

Today's daily lesson comes from John 4 verses 28 and 29:

28 So the woman left her water jar and went away into town and said to the people, 29 “Come, see a man jwho told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?”

It's a small detail in John's story of the woman at the well; but that's what grabs us because John really doesn't give a lot of details -- and he gives no insignificant ones. Everything means something; and this means everything.

But first the story:

She had come back to the same old well for the umpteenth time. She had five husbands we are told; and a sixth man she was living with was not her husband.  And she was back at the well in the middle of the day when no one went to the well looking for -- water.

A new man is there a the old well. "Give me a drink," he asks.

"You, a Jew ask of me a Samaritan woman, for a drink?" She acts surprised, but my hunch is there have been other Jews here at this well before.

"If you had known who it is that asks, he would give you living water," the stranger says.

"You give me water? But you have no bucket and the well is deep." It's an interesting word -- "well".  Its only used a few times in the Bible, and usually not for a water well but rather for a pit -- specifically, the very pit of hell. What well is she speaking of?  The water well or the well of her own life?  Is she saying her life is a living hell?

The stranger answers, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”

"Sir," she says, "give me this water."

They talk longer and intimately. She probably can't believe it herself, but she trusts this stranger -- more than she has ever trusted any man before. In fact, the John says she trusts him so much that she tells him everything about herself -- the good, the bad, and the ugly; she tells him stories from the very dark bottom of her well.

And by the end of the story, when the stranger's disciples show up at the well, the woman goes off back into the city to tell all its people about this man at the well -- this man who is no longer a stranger. And then comes John's detail:

"She left her water jar behind."

It's John's little way of telling us that whatever it was she was looking for out there at the well, she had found it and so much more. She didn't need the jar to draw water from the old well anymore. She had the water inside her now.  The woman at the well had become a well herself, and the font inside her was flowing up and out from the deepest her story and bringing water to whomever else might drink.