Singleness, the Sufficiency of Jesus, and the Beautiful Woman at the Well

I have often tried to imagine the backstory of the woman at the well that Jesus encounters in John 4. What was her life like in the years leading up to her encounter with her Maker?

I imagine a beautiful Samaritan woman, a woman who once a little girl, growing up in a family, and perhaps hoping to get married and have a family of her own one day. Finally, the big day arrives, her wedding day. The day she will begin spending the rest of her life with her husband, a man who will love, cherish, and serve her. She has finally arrived, she has finally gotten to that "hallowed" day, her wedding day. There will finally be someone to tell her how beautiful she is.

The Samaritan woman's day at the chapel is only the beginning of what will become her greatest shame, attempting to find love, life, and identity in men. She goes on to get married again and again and again and again. Each time she gets divorced. The woman at the well is a woman whose sins are apparent, but she has not sinned alone. In those days, husbands divorced their wives, but wives did not divorce their husbands. If this woman was married and divorced five times, then five men divorced her. Imagine that? This woman has been passed around by five different men in her city, and now she is just living with a man, a man who is not even her husband. What must her self-worth be like? What must her feelings of contentment be like? What of her girlhood dreams of love and marriage and family? Here she sits, trapped with a man who won't marry her, and running from five men who have told her they don't want anything to do with her.

I imagine a woman battered and bruised by men, broken by the pain of failed relationships, and emotionally devastated by a life filled with heartache and self-doubt. When was the last time when someone told her she was beautiful? When was the last time when someone told her she had worth?

"Now Jesus had to go through Samaria. So he 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 the sixth hour. When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, "Will you give me a drink?" (John 4:4-7)

It is noon, a time when few other people would be at the well because of the heat at this time of day. Most people come to draw water in the morning or night when it is cooler, and our Samaritan woman knows this. She doesn't want anyone else to see her, to be there when she draws water. Perhaps her shame is simply too much to bear. Jesus, however, stops at this well right at noon.

Jesus breaks all kinds of rules talking with this woman, and I imagine this woman was skeptical of this man talking to her. Another man who simply wants something from her, another man who wants to use her, just another man she might be thinking. But Jesus knows all of this woman's past, and today he is going to speak words of truth to her, words to free her.

This woman is thirsty, thirsty for so many things. Thirsty like we can be. Thirsty for contentment, for peace, for meaning, for a boyfriend or girlfriend, a wife or husband to finally satisfy us, to finally give us ultimate meaning, to finally fulfill us. We look for everything and anything to satisfy us, to give us meaning, to give us hope. IF ONLY I could get that THEN I would be happy is how we often think (how i often think). Perhaps our water girl at the well was searching for her contentment in men, in marriage, in relationships, and hoping that with each new man she might get closer to being truly content. And yet over and over again she gets thrown out and let down, each time she is more and more broken and more convinced that nothing out there can truly satisfy her thirst.

Jesus tells her "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life." The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water so that I won't get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water." (John 4:13-15). And there it is. Jesus offers her living water and the woman yearns for it. THIS is what she has been searching for! This living water, this water will finally satisfy her. But, just as Jesus offers her this hope he exposes her deepest shame.

"Jesus told her, "Go, call your husband and come back." I have no husband," she replied.Jesus said to her, "You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true." (John 4:16-18).

BOOM. Jesus exposes her sin and her shame. Can you imagine the pain gripping our water girl's heart at this moment? And yet Jesus does this to contrast His living water with her water, water that only keeps her in shame and pain and discontentment. Jesus reveals Himself to her as the Messiah. He is the one she has been waiting for. He is the great prize, the great hope, the great peace. I wish I could have seen the Samaritan woman's face in this moment when she realized who this man was.

Finally, our Samaritan woman is drinking from the well that will satisfy her, that will bring her joy, that will tell her how beautiful and worthy she is. In fact, this woman becomes the first evangelist in the gospel of John. And because of her many people come to believe in Jesus Christ as the One who can ultimately satisfy them.

As people, whether single, dating, or married we are constantly searching for that thing will satisfy us, that will quench our thirst. Sometimes we find this in money, or a job, or a relationship, or a hobby, and perhaps for a time that "thing" does satisfy us, but eventually we will hit a wall and have to move on to our "next husband", we will have to move on to something else that we hope will do for us what only God can. There is only one well, only one person, only one relationship that will never leave us wanting more.

Is Jesus sufficient for you? Is He more than enough? Is He where you find your sense of self-worth?

The woman at the well, had a radical encountered with Jesus, and could finally believe what she always hoped was true of her. That she was unbelievably beautiful. Jesus had told her so.

Jesus + nothing = EVERYTHING.
R.D.