Just Add Living Water

     John 4 presents a curious picture. The disciples find Jesus talking to a woman at Jacob's well. John tells us that, "Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?” (John 4:27).

    The fact that Jesus is talking to a woman should give a pause. Proper Jewish men did not talk to strange women. My mother-in-law relates this story well.  As she was traveling to Israel on a plane in 2011, she found herself mistakenly in the seat of an Orthodox Jewish man.  This Orthodox Jewish man found himself in a conundrum.  He could not simply ask her to move. She was a strange woman.  He instead had to relay the fact that my mother-in-law accidentally took his seat to one of his female family members. She then relayed that information to my mother-in-law. My mother-in-law politely moved.

    What Jesus did is actually worse. He not only broke customs by talking to a woman, but he also talked to a Samaritan woman.  John tells us that the Jews had no contact with the Samaritans. They often went out of their avoid Samaria. The Samaritans were the Jew's close relatives. However, the Jews were embarrassed by the Samaritans' intermarriage with pagan peoples.

    So what message was so important to Jesus that he would break thousands of years of religious custom to speak to a woman? That message was that He is the living water. 

    The Samaritan woman came in the heat of the day to draw water at the well because of her shame. She was misused and divorced by five husbands and was living in sin with the man she had now. Yet Jesus came all the way to Samaria to deliver her and then set her apart for ministry. He gave her the living water, and she sprung to life. She served as one of the very first evangelists, telling all that she had met the Messiah, and that he had told her everything she had ever done.

    

     Watercolor painting teaches us a similar principle. It's amazing what a little water can do for our paint. Our watercolor paints seem dead, dry, and lifeless.  Yet when you just add water the paint becomes fluid. It moves and grows. As the Samaritan woman believed in Jesus and partook in the living water, she became alive. She moved as the Holy Spirit influenced her.  She told her whole community that she had met the Messiah. He revealed himself to her by revealing that he knew she had five husbands and was living in sin. Many believed because of the woman's experience with Jesus.

    The two watercolor cards from above teach us two principles. The first card, "Desert Sun," teaches us that there is hope in our dry places. The Samaritan woman went out into the middle of the desert in the heat of the day.  Jesus, the living water, met her thirst for him. He cleansed her from her sin and satisfied her longing for salvation. As a result of coming to know him as Lord and Savior, her soul would never thirst again. The joy she looked for in the pleasures of the world, she found in believing in Jesus.

    The second watercolor teaches us that Jesus is our safe harbor. Our souls find their rest in him. We cannot save ourselves from the shipwrecks we face in life.  Yet Jesus is there steering us like the lighthouse, safely to shore.

Blessings in Christ,

Jane Shoemaker