What Jesus has to offer

This story of the woman at the well is a story about what Jesus has to offer. He uses the well and its water as a figure and illustration of the indisensibility of spiritual life thjat comes from God: as humans can't live without water, they can't live without God.

Jesus appraoched this individual and with it crossed boundaries of gender, culture, and religion. He didn't care what fellow Jews thought, but reached out to an indiviual as the 'Saviour of the world' - the whole world, as people soon reconginsed Him. Jesus simply loved people and demonstrated the love of God for all humanity. For God so loved that the world that He sent Jesus to redeem them by dying a criminal's death on the cross. The love of God gives - it gives everything. Love is giving and that's what God did through Jesus; He gave His very Son, and with Him He gave us everything else we need, too.

Jesus has so much to offer: He reached out to a suffering individual and offered restoration, healing, and a new life. Obviously, marriage and relationships didn't work for the woman, yet Jesus didn't reject her for it, He rather praised her for her honesty. Yet honesty isn't enough; she wanted that water that would quench her thirst. The woman was thirsty for something real, lasting, and deep - that was what Jesus offered to her. That 'water,' the very life of God, Jesus offered would satisfy eternally. The woman would no longer need to run around, try this, that, and the other, but could find eternal satisfaction through the life of Jesus.

I don't know about you, but I can so well relate to a life empty of meaning, devoid of life, and ever-seeking-never-finding stuff. Until I found that 'living water' Jesus offered - the true life with the God-dimension - I was lost in seeking satisfaction here, there, and everywhere, only to be bitterly disappointed by the empty promises of the world. But with that Jesus-encounter everything changed - and never disappointed!

Though this story took place 2.000 years ago, Jesus is still the same today and can meet your every need. You don't have to sing a long with the Rolling Stones, 'I can't get no satisfaction,' because Jesus breaks that cycle of emptiness, loneliness, and meaninglessness. You can change that song into: 'I found Jesus, and satisfaction!' We can turn the US tune 'I still haven't found what I am looking for' into 'I found what I was looking for.'

Once we see Jesus and understand who He really is, we can say with C.S. Lewis - a former atheist (!) - 'I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.'


Shalom,
Gordon