Into The Heart Of God – Heidi BakerSample

Quenched

Miracles happen on ordinary days.

The Samaritan woman left her house to fetch water from the well on a morning that started like any other. This woman’s life was in turmoil. She had been cast out, overlooked, forgotten, passed over. She was not a respectable church member or a pillar of society.

I wonder if, as she walked to the well, in her mind she rummaged through the tangle of her broken life. Maybe she was trying to figure out how the tangle started. Maybe she had tried very hard, but things just kept breaking, and all she had now was cracked and dry. She had cried herself out. Hers was a parched life in desperate need of water.

Now she’s at the well. A man sits quietly. Unlike any man she had met before, this man is Jesus, Son of the living God. He asks her for a drink. She feels ashamed and inadequate. But He sees beyond her inability. He sees right into her soul, into the breaking and the dryness.

Jesus stops to really notice her.

He is committed – just to her. He talks gently about her life, but He sees her from a different point of view. This man, Jesus, speaks to her in a kinder voice than shame. His voice is all love.

Already the water is flowing over her parched life. She has nothing to offer, but she is loved—not inadequate, not unprepared or unable, just loved. The bubbling, living grace water pours in over her cried-out dryness, washes over her shame and the years of stubborn dirt and stained memories. Now all she feels is different, clean, made whole. Even more than that, she feels ready.

Miracles happen on ordinary days. Just like Jesus brought dignity and eternal life to the Samaritan women when He stopped and asked her for a drink of water from the well, He offers the same to you and me—bubbling over life. It is His gift to us, our gift to other parched lives.