A Prayer to Rest and Remember this Holy Wednesday
By Chris Eyte
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.”
“Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? 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?”
Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 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.” - John 4:10-13
I was looking on YouTube recently and looked up my old university. I came across a very old video by chance in which someone mentioned me by name. It was rather strange suddenly having this window back in time, and it brought back a number of memories, good and bad. We all have our life stories, don’t we? The Samaritan woman at the well certainly did. And there’s a reason why Jesus spent time with her.
That’s an important point to remember. Jesus never did anything without a reason. This woman had kept burdens for many years and perhaps felt that she had led a number of parallel lives, in that sense, involving different men at various points throughout her adulthood. She had become a caricature of her real self, drinking from wells to slake an inner thirst but never being satisfied. I opine that she had lost her identity. And in the process, her heart had become burdened.
And then she meets this man when she goes to fetch water, but he is not like other men. This is the Holy One and He invites her to drink from a spiritual well, which is so deep and so satisfying that it wells up to eternal life. She is stunned by this strange invitation but feels at ease in His presence to sit and simply talk with Him. She has space and time to tell Him everything - to rest with Him. Perhaps she can tell him things that she’d never been able to say to other people. The Samaritan woman found, at last, someone to listen to her story.
And Jesus was very willing to listen to her tale but there was a condition - she had to listen to His story in turn. And that story was and is the Word of life, transforming everything. Surely the Reverend Francis Rowley summed this story above all stories perfectly in his hymn of 1886:
‘I will sing the wondrous story
Of the Christ who died for me.
How He left His home in glory
For the cross of Calvary.
I was lost, but Jesus found me,
Found the sheep that went astray,
Threw His loving arms around me,
Drew me back into His way.’
This Holy Wednesday, we are invited - just like the Samaritan woman - to rest and remember Jesus and His story of salvation for us. We contemplate and receive His invitation to eternal life, guaranteed through the cross and resurrection. We remember, too, that He was tempted for 40 days and 40 nights. The Lord understands human frailties because He has personally experienced it. We have no hope in ourselves but we can rest, just like the woman at the well, and remember the Savior who poured out His own body for us to stand up into everlasting life.
Let's pray:
Father God, Today I want to thank you for the hope I have in you. You know my story, and you invite me to know your story, which is that you loved us so much that you came into the world as Jesus Christ to give me eternal life. Thank you that these truths are real and your beautiful Holy Spirit is the guarantee of what is to come. Help me, Lord, to push back from the past and hold onto you, the future. Today I do want to rest in you and remember you. Because you are life to me. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Photo credit: ©GettyImages/Javier_Art_Photography
Christopher Eyte lives with his wife Céline and three children in Swansea, Wales, UK. He has worked as a journalist for many years and writes his own blog (hislovefrees.life) encouraging others in their walk with Jesus. He became a Christian in February 2002, after a friend explained God's amazing grace!
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