“And besides, do you think you’re greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us this well? How can you offer better water than he and his sons and his animals enjoyed?”
John 4:12 NLT
As a teenager I learned while in the Sea Cadets about using the stars to navigate. Polaris, the North Star was important to this.
This Samaritan woman had taken a polar position, and she became fixated on it so she knew she was right and Jesus, and indeed all the Jews, were wrong. Someone with a fixed position will always introduce judgements based on that position. No surprise therefore that the water from Jacob’s well is for her, the very best. She introduces a conflict that Jesus skilfully avoids. How refreshing when today we often see on social media, in many publications, and in public discussion, a race to escalate conflict at every opportunity – something the Church is not immune to. Yet Jesus came to break down walls of hostility.
Of course, the “better” Jesus speaks of is not a qualitative judgement at the expense of another. It’s about the nature of a person’s intimacy with God. We can keep working away at formulating experiences of God, retelling second-hand stories of what God has done elsewhere. Or we can accept Jesus’ invitation to taste God’s living water. Here we press beyond the waterfall to the very source of the watercourse itself. We live in immediate friendship with God, not merely on the testimony of others. Instead, our experience now confirms the testimony of scripture, of 2,000 years of Church life and of the “cloud of witnesses” that Hebrews 12 (NKJV) describes.
We must learn to navigate on this glassy sea, overcome storms and seek the direction and destination in God’s heart. This is your voyage. Like the Samaritan woman, you will have many questions. Yet, you cannot penetrate beyond the obvious, until and unless, you face up to and ask your pressing questions.
QUESTION
What answers to questions have you received? And what questions remain seemingly unanswered?
PRAYER
Captain of my soul, please guide me on this voyage of faith.
KwaZulu.jpg