Beyond the Pail

 

During a recent message I heard on Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well, the teacher drew attention to the social traditions Jesus broke while talking with the young woman. The most striking to me was the fact that Jesus asked her for a drink, despite the fact that drinking out of her vessel would have made him ritually unclean due to her status as a Samaritan. As I thought on this passage, the words of the woman struck me. She couldn’t imagine this Jewish man would want to use HER bucket. Surely there was another bucket he needed to draw the water he was talking about!

I think about the things I bring to my encounters with Jesus; my selfish heart and unskilled hands. They feel like a dented old bucket. I tell myself, “Jesus has much better resources available than what I bring.”  Instead of thinking this way, I am challenged to bring what I have to Jesus when he asks, instead of looking around for a better bucket.


“So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there; so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour. A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) 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.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water?”

‭‭John‬ ‭4:5-11‬ ‭ESV‬‬

https://bible.com/bible/59/jhn.4.5-11.ESV

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