The Well at Noon

The Well at Noon:

Have you ever been in a situation in life where you felt like things were hopeless and you weren’t convinced that there was any reason to keep going?

That Darkest Place is different for all of us, but we’ve all been filled with sorrow, depression, and turmoil.  The Darkest Place isn’t the source of that deep and undeniable longing – no, that’s always with us, but the Darkest Place produces an awareness of those things.

When the circumstances of life strip away all the distractions and we’re faced with hard cold reality – it’s only then that we become truly aware: we’ve been dying of thirst all along and craving something we’ve been too busy, too distracted, and too self-absorbed to pay any attention to.

In chapter four of John’s Gospel we find out that Jesus went through Samaria to get to where He was going. Samaria was worse than any leper-colony for ‘real’ Jews because the Samaritan religious system had been mixed and hodgepodged together with all kinds of other pagan religious practices after the Assyrian invasion and conquest of the Northern kingdom (Israel) in 722 BC.

The ‘real’ Jews despised and hated Samaritans. Jews avoided them and their territory like the plague.  Since the Mission of God (Genesis 12:3) has always been to redeem all of humanity – not just the Jews – and since Jesus (as the prophesied Shiloh/Messiah/Christ, and God incarnate as Immanuel) came to die to make that reconciliation with God happen… He didn’t care about some petty spat between self-righteous Jews & misguided Samaritans; so Jesus went straight through Samaria and came upon a woman at a well at Noon.  

This woman was: a Samaritan, was divorced FIVE times, had no current husband, was living with a man out of wedlock, and she was forced to go to the well at Noon (instead during the cool of morning) to avoid all of the other catty women who undoubtedly ripped her to shreds at every opportunity.

She was the very person whom Jesus went through Samaria for. Jesus knew that this woman was in the Darkest Place, filled with sorrow, depression, and turmoil.  Jesus knew that this woman was dying of thirst and longing for authentic life, but with all the distractions, all the crushing pleasures, Jesus knew all the tiny little trinkets of temptation had to be stripped away in order for her to come to grips with reality.

This woman needed to realize that she was dying of thirst, and that Jesus came down from heaven and walked through the cesspool of humanity and Samaria to meet her at a well at 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.”

The Samaritan woman returned to her town and guess what she did? She praised – praised – praised Jesus as God because He led her out of the Darkest Place and into the abundant life-giving presence of God. Jesus became her greatest joy!

We then read in John’s Gospel , “Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony.”

Have you ever been in the Darkest Place?

Are you there now?

Jesus will stop at nothing… not your sin, not ridicule, not the Cross… nothing to make His appointment with you at the well at Noon.

Blessings,

-Kevin