Looking for Love

Why did Jesus go through Samaria when there was an easier road?

Jesus had a flatter, safer route available and did not take it. He walked the hilly ground into a region good Jews avoided, tired enough to sit down at the well, because a woman was on the other side of that road and love required the climb.

He needed to pass through Samaria. So he came to a city of Samaria called Sychar, near the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there. Jesus therefore, being tired from his journey, sat down by the well. It was about the sixth hour.

John 4:4–6

For the Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost.”

Luke 19:10

Have this in your mind, which was also in Christ Jesus, who, existing in the form of God, didn’t consider equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, yes, the death of the cross.

Philippians 2:5–8

Why was she at the well alone in the middle of the day?

The sixth hour is the hottest part of the day, and no woman in that culture drew water alone. She is there when nobody else is, which means she is hiding, or she has been hidden from. Shame and being unwanted can look like a schedule.

Jacob’s well was there. Jesus therefore, being tired from his journey, sat down by the well. It was about the sixth hour. A woman of Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.”

John 4:6–7

My lovers and my friends stand aloof from my plague. My kinsmen stand far away. They also who seek after my life lay snares. Those who seek my hurt speak mischievous things, and meditate deceits all day long. But I, as a deaf man, don’t hear. I am as a mute man who doesn’t open his mouth. Yes, I am as a man who doesn’t hear, in whose mouth are no reproofs.

Psalms 38:11–14

Turn to me, and have mercy on me, for I am desolate and afflicted. The troubles of my heart are enlarged. Oh bring me out of my distresses. Consider my affliction and my travail. Forgive all my sins.

Psalms 25:16–18

Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming close to him to hear him. The Pharisees and the scribes murmured, saying, “This man welcomes sinners, and eats with them.”

Luke 15:1–2

What compromises have I made to be loved?

Five marriages ended, and the man she is with now belongs to someone else. None of it reads as rebellion so much as a woman trying one road after another and coming up empty, then trying a road she knew was wrong.

Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” The woman answered, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You said well, ‘I have no husband,’ for you have had five husbands; and he whom you now have is not your husband. This you have said truly.”

John 4:16–18

The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I don’t get thirsty, neither come all the way here to draw.”

John 4:15

Have mercy on me, God, according to your loving kindness. According to the multitude of your tender mercies, blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity. Cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions. My sin is constantly before me. Against you, and you only, I have sinned, and done that which is evil in your sight, so you may be proved right when you speak, and justified when you judge. Behold, I was born in iniquity. My mother conceived me in sin. Behold, you desire truth in the inward parts. You teach me wisdom in the inmost place.

Psalms 51:1–6

Jesus, standing up, saw her and said, “Woman, where are your accusers? Did no one condemn you?” She said, “No one, Lord.” Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go your way. From now on, sin no more.”

John 8:10–11

How do I stop seeing people as their worst choices?

It is easy to look at someone's moral mess and stop there. Jesus looks at a woman with five failed marriages and a live-in man who is not hers and sees a person worth a long walk and a patient conversation, and he asks her about worship instead of dismissing her.

The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.” Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship that which you don’t know. We worship that which we know; for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour comes, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such to be his worshipers. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”

John 4:19–24

But Yahweh said to Samuel, “Don’t look on his face, or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for I don’t see as man sees. For man looks at the outward appearance, but Yahweh looks at the heart.”

1 Samuel 16:7

My brothers, don’t hold the faith of our glorious Lord Jesus Christ with partiality. For if a man with a gold ring, in fine clothing, comes into your synagogue, and a poor man in filthy clothing also comes in, and you pay special attention to him who wears the fine clothing and say, “Sit here in a good place;” and you tell the poor man, “Stand there,” or “Sit by my footstool” haven’t you shown partiality among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts?

James 2:1–4

“Don’t judge, so that you won’t be judged. For with whatever judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with whatever measure you measure, it will be measured to you. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but don’t consider the beam that is in your own eye? Or how will you tell your brother, ‘Let me remove the speck from your eye,’ and behold, the beam is in your own eye? You hypocrite! First remove the beam out of your own eye, and then you can see clearly to remove the speck out of your brother’s eye.

Matthew 7:1–5

Is my longing for love itself the problem?

The longing is not the problem. God wired people to search for love, purpose, and belonging, and the trouble starts only when those good longings get handed to things that cannot carry them. The woman at the well was not wrong to want love, only wrong about where it lives.

Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. So where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his children and his livestock?” Jesus answered her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never thirst again; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.”

John 4:10–14

You open your hand, and satisfy the desire of every living thing. Yahweh is righteous in all his ways, and gracious in all his works. Yahweh is near to all those who call on him, to all who call on him in truth. He will fulfill the desire of those who fear him. He also will hear their cry, and will save them.

Psalms 145:16–19

“For my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the spring of living waters, and cut out cisterns for themselves: broken cisterns that can’t hold water.

Jeremiah 2:13

Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will not be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.

John 6:35