GROWING SEEDS: "Wounds and Wells"

Every Saturday morning when I was a kid, our family of five would pile into Mom's Buick and head down Central Expressway to a nondescript beige brick building for church.  One Saturday after church, instead of heading north towards home, Dad pointed the Buick south towards Oak Cliff.  At the time, Oak Cliff was a place you avoided at all costs.  But here was Dad.....driving his young family straight into the "danger zone". 

He turned the car through a neighborhood of falling-down houses, unpaved roads and a woman chasing a chicken through her yard with a hatchet.  It was Dad’s unique way of showing us kids “the other side”.

I was reminded of this family adventure when I read John 4 this week....the story of the Woman at the Well.

"He HAD to go through Samaria on the way”, it said.

I always just figured Jesus literally had to go through Samaria to get from Judea to Galilee....kind of like going from downtown Dallas through Oak Cliff to get to Duncanville.  But it turns out that most Jews in Jesus' day went out of their way to avoid Samaria because they considered any contact with Samaritans as contamination.  They were scum to the Jews.  (I'm guessing they hadn't heard the story of the Good Samaritan just yet.  Just sayin'....)

And then it dawned on me:  Jesus HAD to go to the Samaritans because......they wouldn't come to Him!

You and me....WE are the Samaritans.

The Jews turned their backs on Him, so He came to us....unworthy and filthy as we are....He came to us!  And like the Woman at the Well, it didn't matter that she had been married 5 or 50 times.....or that she was living a life of sin at that very moment.  He offered her His living water.....and she accepted.

Have you, like the Woman at the Well, during the hardest parts of your life, found yourself in the wilderness alone with all your junk, running in a very dark and lonely place?  Ya, me too.  Do you feel unworthy and too far away from God to accept that drink of refreshing living water?

At the very moment she accepted, broken pieces of her life and her heart were washed clean by the love of that refreshing living water....water that washes away OUR sin.  Jesus knew every blemish, but loved her (us) anyway.

As for me, I can confidently tell you that during the darkest times of my life when I felt so alone, He found me there...in an ugly, rolled-up-in-a-ball mess...and offered me His living water of peace. 

You simply need to accept it.