WaterPump2

Growing up, I had a beloved Uncle Jerry who was very competitive. Every time our extended family gathered together, he could be counted on to get out Uno, his card game of choice.

Uno requires very little skill, save the ability to be the first to get rid of all your cards and declare yourself, very loudly, the victor! This, needless to say, was my very boisterous uncle’s favorite part of the game.

As soon as someone had only two cards left and was close to declaring victory, a non-matching card always seemed to come up. That player was forced to draw again and again from the pile, trying desperately to regain the lost ground.

This was also precisely when my uncle’s voice would slowly gain volume, becoming louder and more ecstatic with each opponent’s pull of a "bad" card.

As the dejected player sadly flipped cards one by one, hoping desperately that the next card would be the one to change the whole game around, my uncle would then break into a song he coined specifically for that very occasion: "Going to the well, Going to the well, Hi ho the dairy-o, You’re going to the well!"

Of course, he was likening the search for the needed card to a farmer trying in vain to pull water from an empty well. Always coming up dry.

In Chapter 4 of the Gospel of John, we read of a Samaritan woman, coming to the well to draw water during the hottest part of the day, who also knew a thing or two about searching.  As a noted sinner, and five-time divorcee, I assume she knew very well the grating pain of repeatedly pulling the wrong card from the deck, over and over again.

I imagine her struggle is not unfamiliar to single women of today. She’s played the game so many times before, each time hoping things would be different. That he would be different. But they never were: "Men, they’re all the same."

After five husbands (lovers, boyfriends, dates), and countless broken hearts, it’s possible that she gave in to something she’d always feared: love wasn’t real.  All the expectations for her life, all those girlish dreams of a savior of Great Love, all vanished in a pool of her own dark mistakes. And hope? The one thing she was convinced she’d never lose? She’d forsaken that long ago.

But Jesus . . .

He lives for the unexpected. He loves in ways we could never comprehend, and surprises us in ways we would never imagine.

In direct contrast to all previous estimations, shrugging off the weight of man’s limited perceptions (even as to what road He as a Jew should travel), Jesus headed straight to the center of Samaria, where Jews dared not tread, for a divine appointment with a sinner.

Jesus, the Creator of the world, weary from His trip, sat down at Jacob’s well, against all preconceived notions as to what He would or should do, in order to forever change a scandalous woman’s life.

This is our Jesus. The missing piece, the needed card, the water to our empty wells, capable of changing the whole game in an instant.