Meghann Easley

The invitation to redemption is offered in relationship.

I’ve spent months in John’s Gospel.  I still am. I find that each time I read a chapter, God is showing and highlighting a new part, sentence, or storyline to me in a new way.  This week I again read John 4.  I was reading it in weariness and some heaviness.  I was reading it in my human mindset, and my tiredness reached through the pages and felt kinship with the Jesus of John 4.  

4:1 mentions that Jesus had heard some gossip about himself.  Juicy tidbits of nuggets of gossip that set himself up against his cousin in the race of making and baptizing disciples.  What did Jesus do?  He removed himself from the conversation.  He left the arena without dispute or whisper.  Then, he kept going, he walked until he was tired. 

I wonder if he was just physically tired or if he was somewhat emotionally weary too.  But again I bring myself into his story.  What I actually see in the text is that it says there was a family well, Jacob’s well.  It was “well known” 🙂 – for even today this well is over 100 feet deep!  It was probably deeper then!  A deep, deep well offering cool, refreshing water, if one was walking with a vessel able to descend 100 feet for that very water.  Unfortunately it seems Jesus was not walking with such a vessel, and it happened to be midday – again an unfortunate thing, as most water-needing people would not come right at noon.  

So Jesus sat down in the shade of the well and waited.  I envision him leaning back on the well, head tilted back, deep breathing.  Perhaps the space gave him two things: a moment of quiet, as well as some shade.  I’m not sure, I wasn’t there, but sometimes a moment of quiet when weary is a beautiful thing.  

Then he hears the woman approaching.  His interaction with her is so interesting and so many facets, like a diamond, with each face exposing and amplifying a passion of Jesus’ own ministry.  In two paragraphs and a few sentences he restores her identity – generational identity.  He wipes out the blot of sin over her very being as well as her chosen behaviors.  He gives her an identity as a woman of the fresh start.  The woman with the living water.

But he allows her to give him something as well, he allows her to meet his needs.  He asked her for something that she could provide.  Isn’t it amazing that the Creator of the Universe allowed Himself to become thirsty for his very own creation?  He allowed himself to have need, and to let us participate in the filling of that very need!  He invited her into a relationship with him. 

How fascinating that a few lines later his very own disciples try to feed him food, and he redirects them.  But in this moment he offers his human form, weary from walking, hot and thirsty, to a woman who had a vessel that could hold water.  His very need broke the tension between them.  

He’s still looking to break the tension between us.  He’s looking for our small ‘yes’ to enter into a relationship with us.  He doesn’t NEED us on a God-sized level, but he wants us on a heart level.  He wants to be in a relationship with us.  He wants to restore and renew our hearts and our bodies.  To give us a new direction and vision.  He wants us to know that even today he needs us.  We offer something he allows himself to need, his creation fills a spot in his heart just like he is the only thing that can complete ours.  

This very relationship changes our destiny.  It pivots us to a reality that washes away the stain of our past and consecrates our future to him. 

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