My older sister, Ellan, must have been born a believer. She spouted Jesus love from my earliest memories. I aspired to be like her, but my faith was firmly planted in the mirage that science = fact. It’s no wonder, because my childhood was firmly warped by Catholic scandals. Ellan rebounded by taking her truth into the non-denominational church that her husband was raised in. As a physician, she consistently demonstrated true belief and shamelessly laced her patient care and hospitality with it. It was fascinating and offensive to me and my fellow unbelievers.
As I became an adult, my Godless life choices showed their disastrous outcomes. I worshipped other people’s distorted opinions and impossible demands, especially my husband’s. I was consumed with fantasies of violently avenging victims of violent crime, even though I’d never been a victim myself. My sanity was slipping. I needed the peace I saw in Ellan and her co-conspirators. But what they claimed to believe was simply embarrassing. I couldn’t play along. Instead, I just kept begging God for a sign.
Ellan’s husband’s non-denominational church was called Englewood Christian Church, buried in a modest neighborhood in Jacksonville, Florida. Each year, the church ladies held an annual ladies retreat. Yes, church ladies cutting loose by doing crafts and singing songs and telling stories that made me laugh and cry and feel too stained to be there. Ellan baited her female relatives to come to the retreat by turning it into girls-night-out after the retreat activities. Each year, we packed our music, liquor, and dance clothes and left our children with their fathers. Each year, my fellow unbelievers and I grumbled as we forced ourselves to attend the retreat activities that gave us license to escape our home lives for a weekend.
One such year in the mid-1990s, the Englewood Ladies Retreat was held at the Ponce de Leon Lodge in St. Augustine, Florida. Saturday morning in the gathering room, the pastors’ wives dressed up like the 1960s folk group, Peter, Paul, and Mary. They strummed guitars and sang, “Jesus, met the woman, at the well.” The entire ladies group roared with laughter throughout the song to see the pastors’ wives in hippie clothes. In turn, the singers fought to keep singing without laughing. Afterward, we separated into small groups outside. I found myself in a gazebo with my sister’s church lady friends and none of my own people. Round-robin style, we read the story of Jesus meeting the Samaritan woman at the well.
Jesus Talks With a Samaritan Woman (NIV)
1 Now Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that he was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John— 2 although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples. 3 So he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee.
4 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.)
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.”
The Disciples Rejoin Jesus
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.
31 Meanwhile his disciples urged him, “Rabbi, eat something.”
32 But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.”
33 Then his disciples said to each other, “Could someone have brought him food?”
34 “My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. 35 Don’t you have a saying, ‘It’s still four months until harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. 36 Even now the one who reaps draws a wage and harvests a crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. 37 Thus the saying ‘One sows and another reaps’ is true. 38 I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor.”
Many Samaritans Believe
39 Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I ever did.” 40 So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days. 41 And because of his words many more became believers.
42 They said to the woman, “We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.”
I tried to enjoy the ridiculous simplicity of reading a bible story outside on a sunny spring day with people who seemed to pretend the harsh realities of life didn’t exist. But I was the bigger pretender just by playing along with something I didn’t believe.
After we finished the story, the group leader instructed us to close our eyes for a moment and imagine we were at that well on a nice spring day on a sunny hillside. That was easy and lovely zen. I felt a light breeze and relished the silence. Then she said, “Now imagine Jesus is there. What would you say?”
Way to kill a zen moment, lady!
But I had to pay my dues to be at this resort without my husband calling me irresponsible. I looked at the other ladies. Each one had her eyes closed, hands resting on the bible in her lap. A full circle of bible-thumping church ladies resting peacefully in their imaginary faith.
They couldn’t see me through closed eyes. I rolled my eyes and thought, this is stupid. I dutifully closed my eyes. I managed to get back to my zen well. I forced a mirage of Jesus into the scene. What to ask? What do you ask someone who doesn’t exist? I cut to the chase.
“Why can’t I believe? Can’t you just make me believe?”
His answer was immediate and short.
“The fact that you are asking this means you believe enough already.”
My eyes flew open. He was gone. The well was gone. The church ladies still rested on their bibles with their eyes closed. They didn’t know what just happened. They were right there, and they still didn’t know that the universe just changed, inches away from them. I didn’t know what to do. I frantically willed them to come out of their trance so I could tell them the news. Soon enough, the group leader softly spoke.
“Does anyone want to share their experience?”
My hand shot up. My mouth blurted. “It happened! He answered me!” I sputtered whatever details I could think of to explain how those few words defined and redefined my entire life. He said I was good enough already. Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined that. The ladies smiled and tried to understand, but it was obvious they didn’t quite get it.
I didn’t quite get it myself. How can a tiny bit of logic move a mountain? For one thing, it’s not logic when it pops in and contradicts your every instinct. It becomes logic when it effectively resolves problems. Certainly, my life was forever changed. My vigilante obsession was gone. I proudly joined the ranks of simple believers at bible studies. I even started writing bible studies and distributing them by email. Amazingly, it was a full five years later that I noticed that one famous verse, “if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move” (Matthew 17:20).
Even more amazing is the steady stream of equally brilliant enlightenments he feeds me. The woes and lies of this world create massive dark webs of unnecessary pain and confusion. Jesus points a flashlight right through it and shows the truth. I absolutely cannot wait to live in a world governed by Him.
The most amazing thing of all dawns on me more and more as I face my own dark web of selfish self-love and lies. I’ll save the rap sheet for another post. Every time I think it’s gone, I catch my unchecked behavior at it again. Why would Jesus give me the time of day, let alone a personal prescription, in response to an entitled, disrespectful request?
Here’s the thing, once you believe Jesus exists, you have to decide whether to believe his recorded words. The red letters are few compared to the size of the bible, but boy are they comprehensive and sharp. Every time I try to dismiss one as obsolete or manmade, I find myself wallowing in the world’s dark web of pain again.
The most hard to swallow of all those red letters are the ones that declared his reason for showing up in the first place: “to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). If he appeared to me, he must include me in that group. Surely he remembers the torture and rejection of his last few human days. Surely he felt that same rejection when I called his followers simpletons, and when I rolled my eyes at the Ponce de Leon Lodge, and when I whined and demanded, “can’t you just make me believe?” Because of course, I couldn’t be bothered to sacrifice my own wisdom and reputation for it.
The most amazing thing that ever happened to me is that he heard a tiny cry for help under that dark web of self-love, and he answered in absolute majesty. He answered my unique spiritual identity crisis, just like the woman at the well. All he said to her was she had five husbands, and she ran off saying he told her everything she ever did. All he said to me was my request was faith enough, and I ran off saying he released me from insanity. Only God himself could have known or provided that core puzzle piece. That allows me to believe Jesus when he says “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30). The God of the universe heard me, forgave me, welcomed me as his child, and gave me an answer that put me on a healthier path. I will spend the rest of eternity trying to wrap my head around that.
I’m not alone. Brandon Lake expresses it perfectly. “I sought the LORD, and He heard, and He answered.” I can see the people in that audience that know what an earth-shattering thing it is to be personally accepted by the king of the truth and love. If it hasn’t happened for you, I assure you, there is nothing else worth seeking.