The longer you live, the more obvious how broken
this this world has become. I bet you don't have to look very
far or hard either. The world is literally robbing life out
of people around me.
A relative of mine was just released a few days
to a nursing home after being in the hospital for 40 days and
40 nights. But the man we use to know is no longer there. Though mostly unconscious, the body fights on trying to live.
A neighbor and good friend of our family a few blocks away was recently diagnosed
with stage three breast cancer. She is a mother of three young
kids. She had long dark hair since she was a child, but it's now all cropped and very short,
as chemotherapy started last week. It difficult for me to believe, but even in the
21st century, our best treatment for cancer is to inject poison
into the body in order to destroy both bad and good living
cells.
My contractor's son was arrested again. He's addicted
to heroin. Rehabilitation centers have had no affect. My contractor
is at a loss on what to do. He's kicked his son out of his house
twice already. His son is unable to keep a steady job and continues
to steal from friends, family, and strangers in order to support
his habit. My contractor told me that his son stole all his
copper tubing that he kept in his shed. As an independent contractor,
it's hard enough trying very to make a living; but to have someone
in your own household working against you is very problematic.
A friend of mine that lives in the next town over
has ALS. He use to be one of the top tennis players in the area.
I think he could beat most of the tennis pros in most average clubs. To see his deterioration is heartbreaking. It's now very difficult
to even understand him when he talks, because Lou Gehrigs disease
even robs a person of speech. Not only is he suffering from
the indignity of the loss of all motion, he's living in great
pain. His motor nerves are failing, but his pain receptors
are registering severe joint pain. It's so painful
that he cannot sleep for more than a couple hours at a time.
Two are trying to find life from injecting something harmful into their bodies. But all four people have something in common. All four crave life. They want to live!
Do you know where life can be found? Can you point them in the right direction. I think most people don't know where to look for life. I think too many people are looking in the wrong place.
I'd like to share with you a true story that occurred
about 2000 years ago. I believe it reveals the answer where life can be found.
I could be wrong on this, but I also believe
this incident records the very first Christian missionary. What
makes the story interesting is that this missionary knew almost
nothing about God. Never went to seminary. Probably never attended high school either. Moreover this person was very low on the economic
totem pole. If this person was in India, you would classify this person as an "untouchable". In the Middle East a couple of thousands of years ago, they were called Samaritans. So the cultural norm would be not to touch, talk, or even associate with such a person. But God reaches beyond all social, economic, and sexuality barriers, and uses
this person to bring life to others.
Now he had to go through Samaria. So he came
to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground
Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was
there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down
by the well. It was about noon.
When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus
said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” (His
disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)
The Samaritan woman said to him, “You
are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for
a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.)
Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift
of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would
have asked him and he would have given you living water.”
“Sir,” the woman said, “you
have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can
you get this living water? Are you greater than our father
Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as
did also his sons and his livestock?”
Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this
water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water
I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them
will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal
life.”
The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this
water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming
here to draw water.”
He told her, “Go, call your husband and
come back.”
“I have no husband,” she replied.
Jesus said to her, “You are right when
you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five
husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What
you have just said is quite true.”
“Sir,” the woman said, “I
can see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on
this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we
must worship is in Jerusalem.”
“Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe
me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither
on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship
what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation
is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when
the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit
and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father
seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the
Spirit and in truth.”
The woman said, “I know that Messiah”
(called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain
everything to us.”
Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking
to you—I am he.”
The Disciples Rejoin Jesus
Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find
him talking with a woman. But no one asked, “What do
you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?”
Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went
back to the town and said to the people, “Come, see
a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the
Messiah?” They came out of the town and made their way
toward him.
Meanwhile his disciples urged him, “Rabbi,
eat something.”
But he said to them, “I have food to eat
that you know nothing about.”
Then his disciples said to each other, “Could
someone have brought him food?”
“My food,” said Jesus, “is
to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.
Don’t you have a saying, ‘It’s still four
months until harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and
look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. Even now the
one who reaps draws a wage and harvests a crop for eternal
life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together.
Thus the saying ‘One sows and another reaps’ is
true. I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others
have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits
of their labor.”
Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because
of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything
I ever did.” So when the Samaritans came to him, they
urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days. And because
of his words many more became believers.
They said to the woman, “We no longer
believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for
ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior
of the world.”
-John
4: 4 - 42
