v 15. “Please, sir,” the woman said, “give me this water! Then I’ll never be thirsty again, and I won’t have to come here to get water.”
You can imagine the way the woman was thinking! Wow – no more midday trips to the well, lugging the heavy pots home again in the heat once they are filled. Life would be so much simpler.
So again – just as we discovered in yesterday’s reading – Jesus launches another bolt from the blue totally unrelated to anything they had talked about before. ‘ “Go and get your husband,” ‘ . The woman now had at least two things struggling in her head; the thought of running water, and her marital status. Finally, add to all that what we find Jesus saying, in v 26, ‘I am the Messiah’. She finds herself facing the most stupendous issue imaginable – ‘Is this weary, thirsty, lonely man really God’s Messiah?’
And that is the question we all have to consider when we come across the claims that Jesus made. Can this crucified and raised again man of history, living on earth some 2,000 years ago really be the person he claimed to be? Was he really ‘God in the flesh’? Is he really able to forgive my sin, and offer me a place in his eternal Kingdom? Does he really love me and want me as part of his family? Once we begin to look seriously at Jesus all sorts of questions leap to mind – and none of them easy.
That’s the trouble about seeing and discovering about Jesus. He raises many more questions than he answers, and he may well challenge some of the things going on in our lives. In order to carry us forward in life he might well make us a bit uncomfortable at the outset. That is certainly the experience of some people as they consider the implications of being a Christian. Don’t be surprised if people ask you all sorts of awkward questions once you let them know you are a Christian. Just pray that God the Holy Spirit will give you the wisdom to answer gently and with sensitivity.
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