The Inconvenient Meeting with the Discarded Woman

Part 3 of this story series …


If he had been fully human, he would have easily been annoyed.


He was resting from a long journey, his feet gritty dry with dust, his muscles tired and achy, the back of his neck itchy and scorched with sunburn.


His buddies had left him sitting at Jacob’s well, a landmark dating before Israel’s history. Although the water was there for the taking, he had nothing with which to draw it.


And it was hot. So hot. The noonday sun beat into his skin as sweat unrelentingly covered his face and back. There was no relief from it.


In this human body, in this human place, far from His celestial home, he was in physical misery.


It was an inconvenient time to meet with her.


He was within his right to suffer in silence as he spied her coming over the crest of a hill.


Any man sitting by a well alone, seeing a woman coming to draw water at the hottest time of the day, knew one thing about that woman: She was an outcast. She was probably a prostitute. She was most likely open to any proposition.


Men with a place in rabbinical society, however, were expected to ignore her, shun her. If he were fully human, he would have withdrawn immediately from the side of the well and walked a few paces away, to avoid being seen talking to her. Otherwise, what would become of his reputation?


And yet.


She was the reason he was here.


He knew before he ever set foot on this journey that he would be meeting her.


He knew before she woke to the dawn that this would be the day to change her life.


He knew before she was even born … that she belonged to Him and that He had come to this earth for her and those like her.


As she approached the well, somewhat hesitantly at the surprise sight of him, his heart welled with compassion and love. He saw everything she had done. He saw everything that had been done to her. He saw every hurt she had experienced. He knew precisely how many tear drops she had shed and how many nights she had cried so hard that her head ached.


He knew.


And He loved.


Despite the inconvenient timing, despite his tiredness, despite his physical discomfort, despite his human desire to be left alone … He spoke to her.


That’s when everything changed for her – in that one moment when He said, “Will you give me a drink?”


She was about to learn that He instead was the giver of water.


What does this have to do with a Christian Safehouse? Tune in for the next part of the story …