This upcoming Sunday I will be using the story of the Woman at the Well in John 4 to discuss the challenges of forgiveness. Tired from his journey, Jesus sits down at Jacob's well, then realizes that he has no cup to drink from much less a bucket to draw water from. But there is someone out in the desert making her way to the well and she is carrying a bucket. It is about noon. There are no shades, no comfort, and no relief from the desert heat. For her, hell was not someplace she had to go to; it was as close to the watering hole in her hometown. It was there she confronted her loneliness. It was there she escaped from the ridicule. It was there that she ran from her past. And it was there, at Jacob's well that she discovered Jesus. The change in her comes about because Jesus reveals himself to her, not because she did something about her own sin. Jesus is the one in whose presence we know who we really are - the good and the bad. Jesus is the one who shows us who we are by showing us who he is. He crosses boundaries, breaks all the rules, drops all disquises. He offers the living waters of forgiveness so that we can go back and face people we thought we could never face again and speak forgiveness as boldly to them as it was spoken to us.
