Here are some questions to ponder: Do you know how many ridges there are around the edge of a dime? (118) Do you know how many muscles a cat has in each ear? (32) Do you know how the microwave oven was discovered? (A researcher walked by a radar tube and the chocolate bar in his pocket melted)
What do you call a word that reads the same forward and backward, like radar above, noon or civic? (palindrome) What sentence contains all the letters of the alphabet? (The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog).
One more question: where is God at work — and it’s not always in the church?
In fact, God does some of his best work outside the church. For instance consider this in John:
“Jesus 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?’” — John 4: 5-7
They were not in church, and the woman had not come to the well for a lesson in theology. She came for water and found living water.
But there are several problems. Women don’t talk to men in public, Jews and Samaritans don’t talk to each other period, and the rabbis didn’t waste time teaching theology to women.
There also was that marriage thing. She’d been married five times, so, she’s a serial wife without being a movie star like Mickey Rooney, who was married eight times to eight different women, or Elizabeth Taylor, who was married eight times to seven different men (she married Richard Burton twice).
The woman at the community well is the wrong gender, the wrong race, and the wrong religion when Jesus asks her for a drink of water.
Then he tells her if she knew who he was, she’d ask him for a drink of water, and she smiles as she points out he has no jar.
Now we’ve come to the most important verse in this story.
“Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town ...”
— John 4: 28
Finally, because we started with questions, I’ll leave you with another: “Why did John include this silly little detail about the woman leaving her water jar at the well?”
She came with guilt and left with forgiveness. She came with shame and left with a testimony. She came with an empty water jar and left filled with the living waters of faith!
Charles “Buddy” Whatley is a retired United Methodist pastor serving Dawson Street Methodist Church in Thomasville, Ga. With wife, Mary Ella, they’re missionaries to the Navajo Reservation.
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