Now Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that he was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John— although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples. So he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee. 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?” 13 Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” 15 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.” 16 He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.” 17 “I have no husband,” she replied. Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. 18 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.” 19 “Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. 20 Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.” 21 “Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.” 25 The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.” 26 Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I am he.” 27 Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?” 28 Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, 29 “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?” 30 They came out of the town and made their way toward him. JOHN 4This woman was just doing what she did everyday. She came alone to the well to draw water. She wasn't expecting to have her life changed. She wasn't expecting the walls of her heart to be knocked down by LOVE. What about you? What walls are around your heart these days? Walls that have been built because of fear, bitterness, anger or exhaustion. Walls built because you don't feel loved or honored, or accepted as you are. There are NO WALLS around the well of God's love! What walls have you built around other people? Maybe the people who don't believe as you do, or look like you or vote like you....Are there walls you have built around these people that prevent you from seeing God's image in them? What places do you refuse to visit or go to because of these walls? How might Jesus be inviting you to go sit by the well and love the people who are there? Jesus sees this Samaritan woman, really sees her and values who she is even in her brokenness . Jesus loves her and invites her to change and see things differently. How is Jesus inviting us to see things differently today? How can you know and believe Jesus really sees who you are and knows all you ever did but loves you anyway?
In the midst of everything, Jesus wont leave us thirsty. Jesus wants to provide us with living water in the wilderness...in the desert of lent,
Jesus won't leave us with the thick walls around our hearts.
In the Desert /wilderness of where you are, whether in peace or in crisis. God is providing water. Jesus is knocking down walls that separate us from him and from each other! We need to go to the well. And Draw water like we always do. Jesus is waiting for us to show up! What will it take for you to show up at the well?
We celebrated International Women's Day this week. So today I celebrate the first evangelist! The Samaritan Woman at the Well! I love that Jesus reveals himself as Messiah to her FIRST! A woman! And not a Jewish woman, but a Samaritan woman! Now that's breaking down lots of cultural walls! There are NO WALLS at the Well! ART: Jesus and the Samaritan Woman by Jorge Cocco 2017 ©lillylewin and freerangeworship.com
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The King in his might loves justice. You have established equity; you have executed justice and righteousness in Jacob. (Psalm 99:4)Here the Psalmist speaks of the King, the political entity loving justice in his might. God executes or delivers justice and righteousness. The difference is equity. When fairness is the goal, both equality and equity are needed to achieve it. Equity demands that what the law was intended to accomplish be considered more than just looking at what the letter of the law says. What does this mean to us? What can we do in light of these ideals, that is so difficult to understand let alone implement? Women have always cared for their families and taken on the burden of caring for what happens to other families. Equality says there must be food on the shelves available to everyone. It also means everyone should have an equal right to enter the store and buy what they wish. But not everyone has the money to do that.
For there will never cease to be poor in the land. Therefore, I command you, 'You shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy and to the poor, in your land.' (Deuteronomy 15:11)Equity does not mean that if I can afford to eat Prime Rib, everyone should. It does, however, mean everyone should eat, and if I have more, part of my mission needs to be sure that they have the food to eat too. While politics wants to argue about what can be done in its might, we invite others to share a meal, donate and volunteer at the local food banks and for school lunches so no child goes hungry. In the workplace, we support other women in lesser positions and promote their abilities. We vote for equal pay for equal work and take the time to have sometimes difficult conversations with the men in our lives, who may not understand why all this is so necessary, for no reason other than how they were raised. We speak the truth about these disparities. Equity perhaps is most important in the willingness to share information another might lack. Oh, the solutions can seem so easy on the surface. Everyone should have equal opportunity to work at any job they desire. And we cheer. However, do they have equal opportunity to the education needed for the job they want? Student loans are one way the corporate and political worlds have attempted to provide equity. Does anyone think that is a perfect solution? And when we no longer cheer Band-Aid solutions, we ponder. Here is a good time to note these things in large portion are not women-only problems. None of this is easy. Recently I watched the movie Woman Talking based on the book of the same name written by Canadian author Miriam Toews. This issue of women’s rights here takes on both matters of life and death and faith. As a few of the women work to find a solution for an entire community, we see how heart-wrenchingly difficult fairness can be. They struggle to decide both what is necessary and what is just. It is raw and it is hard to watch. And yet shouldn’t such discussions be hard? Being fair is not a simple task. Equity is not a matter of things. Or changes in laws. It is a matter of the heart. It is Biblical. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you scriptural. What women can do best to achieve equity is to do what they have always done when it comes to matters of justice. Speak out. Abigail spoke out, coming face to face with David after her less than magnanimous husband Nabal refused to share his abundance with David’s troops. She spoke out against sheer might being a solution and appealed to David’s heart. Queen Esther spoke out. By doing so she saved a nation. Politics and might look for outcome-driven results. Biblical solutions look more to heart-driven results based on how we treat one another. There is a huge difference between the two. One shoe does not fit all. Dear Lord, guide us as we look for equitable decisions that serve all. Let us leave for our children a better world that looks for heart answers. Speak into our lives a wisdom that speaks to the rights of all your people. Amen.

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Once there was an elderly lady who was so poor all she had was a cracked water jar. Each day she went to the river to collect water and by the time she got home the pot was half empty. 'I feel really bad' said the cracked pot sadly one day. 'You have to keep going to the river for water because so much is lost through the crack.' 'Don't be sad' said the woman. 'Just watch the roadside and you will see something amazing'. Next time they went to fetch water the cracked pot looked but couldn't see anything. As they reached the river he said to her 'I didn't see anything - only the dry dusty road.' 'Don't worry,' replied the woman. 'Just keep looking'. On the return journey the pot was delighted to see the verge was full of beautiful flowers. When they got home the pot asked the woman where they had come from when the other side was bare. The old woman smiled. 'On the way back from the river water dribbles out of the crack in your side and so the flowers bloom.' she said. 'So you see even cracked pots have their uses.'[caption id="attachment_51231" align="alignnone" width="1224"]

"Once there was a kindly noble lady who lived in a magnificent mansion and she often used to entertain guests. One day as she and a friend were taking tea together the fine China teapot slipped out of her hand and fell to the ground and the spout and handle broke off. Most people would have thrown it out but she loved that pot so she gave it a new form of life instead. She planted delicate flowers in it and it became its own 'sacred enclosure' reminding her and her guests that in our brokenness we can be even more lovingly tended and cherished than when we were whole.".Kintsugi bowl [caption id="attachment_51230" align="alignnone" width="1238"]


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Presented with the image of faith breaking down walls, one of the first things that comes to mind is the Battle of Jericho, won by an unlikely combination of perseverance, obedience and music. The Israelites needed no weapons beyond these to make the city walls of their enemy come tumbling to the ground. Sadly, of course, they did use their swords afterwards, but it was by faith that the barriers to victory were destroyed.
Christians who have won battles have often done so by obeying God with peaceful protest. Leaders like Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King and Josephine Butler understood the power of a righteousness that did not need to lift a weapon. Christians tend to be campaigners when it comes to fighting for social justice. We are in it for the long haul, because we understand that changing hearts and minds takes time, and the walls of these precious places will only break down and let in the compassion of Christ when they have been prayed for, and walked with and shown the glory and the music of God’s kingdom.
We are always showing the world what the alternative could be to the mess we are making.
The recent prevalence of focussing urgently and often vociferously on certain issues has been concerning to me. We seem to be looking for a fight and imagining that it is within our power to change a great deal quickly by raising our voices, not in prayer or music, not in impassioned, inspiring speech, or long, careful letter-writing, but in anger, in zeal, in self-righteousness, even in vitriol.
I am mostly bedbound these days as many of you know, so my main impression of this change comes from social media. I see people who love God leaving aside his methods and looking for quicker, more satisfying results. I see Christians virtue-signalling and boasting in things other than their weakness, and I see us acting largely as individuals instead of as a chorus.
I am concerned. “Social justice warriors” is a label many Christ followers seem eager to embrace. Good causes are surely what we are all about. Yet, Jesus spent precious little if any of his time protesting or petitioning, or urging people to support particular leaders. He simply loved. He certainly did not condone violence. The turning of the tables at the Temple does a lot of heavy-lifting here. My understanding is that this was a deeply meaningful act in the build up to his painful death, where he was given up entirely to the authorities.
Scripture urges us constantly to bless and deliver the poor, the sick, the needy, widows and orphans. Those on the side-lines, the discarded and the weak. These were also the ones, along with those labelled sinners, to whom Jesus showed the most compassion and grace in his time on earth. Now we seek different labels and are in danger of missing who the real outcasts are. We follow the crowd and the media when they tell us certain groups are disenfranchised or vulnerable, without thinking for ourselves, and our leaders go along with this.
We need to be wiser, dear friends. We need to stop running after cultural bandwagons. We need to remember some truths. That it is still the poor, the sick, the needy, the widows and orphans who need our help, of whatever colour or creed. That postmodernism and its fads and terminology do not speak for us nor determine what love is, and as far as I can see, end up dividing us more than uniting us.
Most of all, we need to remember that we should be helping and loving one another as a team and for the long-term. This is the thing that I find the strangest. That so many people want to be “history makers,” known for changing the world. This message rooted in individualism is foisted on us again and again. I see it all the time in children’s books now. Yes, it is good to be inspired by saints and those who fought for change. But most of us are not Dorothy Day or Mother Teresa, and they would be the first to say they would have managed nothing without God and without their supporters and sisters and brothers.
It can take a long time and much work to bring worthwhile change. Yes, we need to be giving to good causes and making informed choices. But most lasting good will come from prayer, as well as from electing (or being) good leaders and working for well-considered and planned legislation.
We have other callings to remember. Not all of us are Christ’s hands. Some of us are hearts, or eyes, some of us are here to pray, to love, to heal, to see, to create, to raise families as well as awareness. Some, even to speak loving correction to the Church in prophecy.
Activism is just a fashionable word for what we as the Church should be doing in our communities already. The kind I see online seems to be spoiling for a fight, raging at the status quo, instead of discerning the best way forward, being gently compassionate, or thinking in the long-term beyond our own small lives.
I see that we are too often seeking to offer fealty to flags and firearms, kings and countries, instead of rallying around the life of sacrificial love to which we are called.
Can we take a moment, now and then, perhaps, to tune our trumpets to heaven’s notes of grace before we fall in line to play the world’s songs? To look to our prophets for guidance? To step back from the walls the world tells us need to fall and ask God to help the scales first fall from our spiritual eyes that we might see as he does? To do these things before we act, and not rush in with the gall to think we have all the answers, instead nurturing the balm in our hearts that we might give out in good time as medicine to an ailing world?

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