Sometimes you meet the strangest people at the water-cooler.
I’d never seen him before. We could have been any two thirsty people coming for a drink. How could he have known that behind my mask I was forever searching for love in all the wrong places?
Five times my dowry returned, I’d forgotten who I really am. I’d giving up the formalities and even worse, the hope of every finding my true love – or my true self. I came at noon to avoid the whispers of the gossips.
I could see right away that he was a Jew and I braced for the sting of his slur. But he merely asked for a drink. “What, no racist epithet?” I asked.
But he simply said that God is generous and if I knew who was talking to me and asked him for a drink, he’d be more than willing to give me a drink. I stared at him.
How he thought he’d collect water with his bare hands I had no idea.
I asked him if he thought he was better than old Yakov who gave us this water that has served our village and my ancestors for these past 18 centuries. (Isn’t it great when you come up with the perfect come-back?)“Oh,” says he, “Yakov’s water is fine as long as it lasts, but my water will satisfy your thirst the rest of your life. “The water I give you will be an artesian spring within, gushing fountains of endless life."
Now he was talking my language. I didn’t know if he meant solving my never-ending trips to fetch water or if he meant that other thirst that runs way deeper than the throat, deep-down inside where your soul aches and sadness turns to sobbing sometimes. But I could use an ‘artesian spring within’.
“I’d go for some of that,” I said. “I’d love to never have to come back here for water.” Then without even looking up he said it. I should have seen it coming, but I was so used to hiding my scars. He told me to bring my husband.
“Sorry, not married,” I told him, but he just nodded and started reciting my marriage resumé back to me – the entire saga of my nightmare. Busted! Nowhere to hide. But I wasn’t ready to surrender. So I asked him a question about religion. That’s usually a safe place to hide your true heart. It makes you feel like you’re being virtuous while you avoid being real.
He just said “you’ve been waiting forever for this moment – and it’s finally come when what you're called doesn’t matter and where you worship doesn’t either. It's who you are and the way you live that count before God.” He said that God is a Father who is looking for people who are simply and honestly themselves before him in their worship.
Where he got all that from, I had no idea, but I told him that I would wait ‘til the Messiah came and sorted everything out. To which he said “I am He”. That was it. “I am He.”
I was completely over-whelmed – confused – elated and afraid all at the same time. I ran back to town – even left my pitcher behind. I had to tell the others about him. He found the woman behind the mask and offered me living water. How could he have known? He put his finger on the deepest pain in my life, my fear of being found out and the aching desire to be truly found.
He stayed with us for two days and we got to know him a lot better – and what he promised has been so true. He quenched that deep thirst inside me; he is a living spring of water in the very core of my being day after day. As a triple outsider - as a Samaritan, a woman and with a string of failed marriages, he was the generosity of God to me.
Like I said, you never know who you might meet at the water-cooler.
Grace Jacobson is a pseudonym inspired by The Gospel of John Chapter 4
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