The Thirsty Woman at the Well

It was the hottest part of the day. The sun sat heavy in the sky, and the streets were empty. Everyone with any sense was hiding in the shade.

But one woman wasn't.

She came to the well when no one else would. The other women came in the cool of the morning, together, laughing. She came alone, in the heat, because she was tired of the looks and the whispers, tired of being the one nobody wanted near.

Do you remember Nicodemus, who came to Jesus in the dark of night so no one would see him? This woman came at blazing noon for the very same reason.

So she carried her empty jar to the well. Alone.

And someone was already there.

A man, resting by the well, dusty from the road. A Jewish man. And she was a Samaritan woman, and in those days those two did not even speak to each other. She got ready for the cold shoulder. She knew that look so well.

But he looked at her. Really looked. And he said, "Would you give me a drink?"

She blinked. "Me? You're asking me?"

And the man smiled, and said the strangest thing.

"Drink the water from this well," he said, "and tomorrow you'll be thirsty all over again. But the water I give becomes a spring inside you. It never, ever runs dry. If you knew who I was, you would be the one asking me."

She was thirsty for far more than water. She came to that well every single day, but the jar was never the problem. Deep down she was thirsty for someone to stay. Someone who knew everything about her, all of it, the messy parts and the lonely parts, and didn't walk away.

And Jesus knew. He told her things about her own life that no stranger could ever know. And she waited for him to flinch, to pull back, to leave the way everyone left.

But he stayed. He looked at her with eyes full of welcome, as if she were the one person in all the world he had come that whole long way to find. As if she were his favorite. And he loves every one of his children exactly that much.

And right there, in the heat, by the well, she felt something she hadn't felt in years.

She felt found.

She forgot her water jar completely. She ran straight back to the very town that whispered about her, and she couldn't stop talking. "Come and see! Come and see a man who told me everything, and wanted me anyway!"

You and I have that thirst too. That deep-down ache that toys don't fill, and treats don't fill, and even the people we love can't quite reach. We keep going back to the well, and the well keeps running dry.

The woman had been thirsty her whole life. And all along, without even knowing his name, she had been thirsty for him.

He was the water she was made for.

By evening the town she had run from came streaming out to the well, and they begged Jesus to stay. He stayed two whole days. "Now we have heard him ourselves," they said. "This really is the Savior of the world." And when Jesus walked on from that well, he turned his dusty feet toward home, toward Nazareth, where his next welcome would not be so warm.