Memorable Encounters. Roberto Badenas

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СКАЧАТЬ are right when you say you have no husband,” Jesus kindly confronts her. “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.”

      Jesus does not condemn her. He speaks neither of adultery nor of divorce. Neither is His simple statement meant to humor her. He simply reads her heart.

      Five husbands, five unclosed wounds. How many disappointments? How many times can a heart break?

      “It is not strange that in order to avoid more suffering you commit yourself less and less. You have buried five dreams. Five times you planted gardens where there was only desert. You cannot take more failure, but the ground is still parched. If you have given up on human love, could it be because you are actually looking for eternal acceptance?”

      The woman begins to understand. “Sir,” she says, suddenly seeing Him for the first time, “I can see that You are a prophet.”

      For a brief moment she drops her mask of frivolity, allowing Him to glimpse her broken heart. But she recovers quickly.

      “I am not a practicing believer, although I have always wanted to believe. But what should I believe in?” she asks. “You Jews say that you possess the truth. And your God can be worshipped only in your Temple. But the Samaritans say that one can find God only in Mount Gerizim.”

      This quick-witted, intelligent woman knows that religions tend to envelop themselves in the cocoon of their own beliefs. She knows that the religious too often argue among themselves out of fervor, fanaticism, and pride. She also knows that religious leaders are men. As a Samaritan, the woman understands men only too well. So she asks a question meant to draw Jesus from her own personal case to much less dangerous issues.

      But Jesus sees through her strategy. And since His bias is toward neither the Jews nor the Samaritans, He avoids both options. “God is higher than our ecclesiastical systems and larger than our theological debates. In order to find Him, you need not make a pilgrimage to a temple or climb a mountain. You need only to search the depths of your own heart.

       “Religion without love as its core is nothing more than an empty cistern. To try to worship God without the indwelling spirit of truth is neither realistic nor, indeed, possible. For this reason, we find only emptiness in so many sanctuaries. They are no more than ancient dwellings on the verge of collapse. Only when we hunger and thirst after righteousness will we be satisfied, our thirst quenched. Only when we drink of living water can we truly find eternal life.”

      The Samaritan woman sighs. “I know that Messiah [called Christ]

      is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us” (John 4:25, NIV).

      “The time has come,” Jesus tells her. “I who speak to you am He.”

      The great revelation is made. Not to a dyed-in-the-wool Jew, but to a foreigner. Not to a devout, pious woman, but to a lost soul. Jesus reveals Himself to the outcast. He offers the covenant to the scorned and thirsty one.

      The Samaritan woman no longer dips for water in the same old well. By its edge she leaves her empty pitcher and runs home to tell her neighbors about Jesus.

      Today healing water has begun to flow. There is enough to cleanse all the wounds that the human heart has borne. Its abundance not only satisfies all Sychar and Samaria, but runs free for all, healing wounds and quenching thirst wherever it goes.

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