Day 17 (3/8)
WEEK 3: Written by John Anderson
I came to ECC 11 years ago after the marriage of Mary and I, in our low 80’s. Mary, years agowas the ECC organist, Mary Chamberlain. Together we have done perhaps 150 programs in senior care settings, and I have written many “musings.” We thank God for our life together, now in our low 90’s.
Day 17 (3/8)
Scripture Reading: John 4:1-12
Now Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that he was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John— 2 although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples. 3 So he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee.
4 Now he had to go through Samaria. 5 So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon.
7 When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” 8 (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)
9 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.[a])
10 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.”
11 “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? 12 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?”
A few weeks ago when having my “quiet time”, the Bible verse came to me: “Be still and know that I am God”…a verse that I had known well. What was special was God impressing on me those two words “be still” and especially the word “Be”…up to me to be still. Being still can be difficult. The last thing I want to do is not to do…to just to be still. Then, while doing just that, not doing, just being still in God’s presence, my cat Annie sensed that I was still, just what she wanted so she could jump on my lap and settle in for her time of communion.
Those words from scripture, coupled with Annie’s response, was a special experience. How does that relate to the Woman of Samaria? Well, yes at a well, she was arrested, stopped, ceased from her doing at the well, so her heart could be touched and her life changed.
In these weeks of Lent, what better thing to do but stop doing for a time and be still and know that God is there. Rev 3:20: “I stand at the door and knock.” (Stop doing for a time today and just be still, knowing God is there.)