Catching Fire: The Power of Our WordsNäide

One of the things that made Jesus so unique was His willingness to engage with people the religious leaders had written off and excluded. The Samaritans fit into that group. Because their line was not fully Jewish and they had attempted to worship God in their own way, they were looked down on. Jesus made it a point to connect with those others wrote off, including the woman referenced in this passage. Jesus spent time with her, saw her, talked with her, and made her feel known. Because of that one interaction, the word of Him spread to other Samaritans in the area. Jesus may not have spent a lot of time engaging Samaritans, but because He spent time with one Samaritan woman - His message reached them.

In the same way, our words with people can go much farther than the one person who hears them. Their impact can spread to people and places we may have never intended. What if we treated the conversations we had and the interactions we had as they lived much longer than the time and space they took place in? Would we talk differently? Would we speak differently? There’s no telling the lifespan our words have, so what if we spoke in a way where our words created a legacy we were proud of?