John 4:7-15 (New Standard Revised Version )
(Entire Reading John 4: 4-42)

7 A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” 8 (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.)

9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.)[a]

10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”

11 The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12 Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?”

13 Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 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.”

15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”


Some Thoughts on Today’s Reading—Pastor Pam

The encounter with the woman at the well speaks to what fills us and makes us whole. We may thirst for many things in this life, but Jesus is talking here about having our most essential thirst quenched. We are filled up when he dwells within us and we are in deep relationship with him. How do we experience this?

If we search our own stories and experiences with Jesus, we might remember when we first began to drink from the cup of living water. Sometimes, it can be the time we understood what it felt like to do something for someone else…when we selflessly did something for someone with no thought of personal gain.

In that moment, the living water began to flow within us, and the feeling soaked into every cell of us and gave us a completeness we’d never experienced. Not only did we receive the living water, we shared it freely with others.

Jesus offers this to the woman at the well. In this moment she realizes he knows who she is and what he expects of her. She must go and share what she knows to others. We suspect she will prayerfully go to the well again and again and seek his presence.

This moment at the well is our story, too. As Jesus asks for water and tells the woman about living water, he invites us to drink in and share the divine and free flowing water whose essence is pure love.

Peace and Grace,
Pastor Pam

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