Never Less ThanSample

“Jesus had to go through Samaria” (John 4:4). This verse stirs my heart because I know what’s coming next. Jews avoided Samaritans like the plague—literally. They were a quarantined people, and the Jews kept their distance. And the Samaritans hated the Jews right back.

So it wasn’t because of geography that Jesus “had to go through Samaria” on His way to Galilee, but because His Father told Him to. Jesus reminded the disciples many times He only did what His Father told Him to do (John 5:19).

There was a woman in Samaria who felt less than every man who had thrown her away, as well as every woman who looked the other way. But she was about to experience something new: being pursued by pure love.

It was the heat of the day. While most women went to the well to draw water in the cool of the morning or evening, this woman went at high noon to avoid them. She preferred the sun’s heat to the cold shoulders of the other women.

When she showed up, Jesus was waiting and asked, “Will you give me a drink? (John 4:7). He broke the cultural rules by talking to a woman in public and drinking from a Samaritan’s cup. He was willing to cross the man-made rules to set the God-made woman free.

As Jesus engaged her in conversation, He asked her to get her husband. When she admitted she didn’t have one, Jesus revealed the sad truth of her life. She’d had five husbands plus one extra. We don’t know why she had divorced five times. In those days, a man could divorce his wife if she went outside the home with her hair unbound or spoke to a man in public. He could even divorce her if she burned the bread or if he just didn’t like her anymore. This was a woman who had been abused, misused, and tossed away by men she trusted and loved.

Jesus spoke to her of her past without a hint of condemnation or rejection. He even applauded her honesty and commenced to have the longest recorded conversation in the New Testament with this broken woman.

Then Jesus did something amazing. For the first time, He told someone that He was the Messiah. “I, the one speaking to you—I am he” (John 4:26).

This woman, pursued by God, dropped her water bucket and ran back to town to tell the very people she had avoided about Jesus. Her story holds great promise for any woman who has ever tried to fill the hole in her heart with relationships but comes up empty. It is for each of us who have ever felt less than because we were tossed away or overlooked. God’s pursuit began in the Garden of Eden with the words, “Where are you?” (Genesis 3:9) and continued with the words “Jesus had to go to Samaria.” Listen closely. They continue even now.