You came from dust and dust would be Without the Great Son’s victory. The gift is free yet must be claimed By goodness lived and evil tamed.
Prepared to walk this Lenten trail They face death’s dark and shadowed vale. Rememb’ring Christ who led the way They bravely march beneath his sway. ~Ash Wednesday’s Early Morn
And so the light runs laughing from the town, Pulling the sun with him along the roads That shed their muddy rivers as he goads Each blade of grass the ice had flattened down. At every empty bush he stops to fling Handfuls of birds with green and yellow throats; While even the hens, uncertain of their notes, Stir rusty vowels in attempts to sing.
He daubs the chestnut-tips with sudden reds And throws an olive blush on naked hills That hoped, somehow, to keep themselves in white. Who calls for sackcloth now? He leaps and spreads A carnival of color, gladly spills His blood: the resurrection—and the light. ~Louis Untermeyer from “Ash Wednesday”
This is the time of tension between dying and birth... The Word without a word, the Word within The world and for the world; And the light shone in darkness and Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled About the centre of the silent Word. O my people, what have I done unto thee. ~T.S. Eliot from “Ash Wednesday”
My people, what have I done to you? Micah 6:3
May the light shine on my dusty darkness. May I be stilled, stunned to silence by the knowledge of the Lord, who sees me as I am, knows me, and loves me anyway.
O people, what have I done?
We who are His loved children, who too often turn away from Him so only our ashes remain.
His touch ignites us to light again, His blood has been spilled across the sky.
Barnstorming’s Lenten theme this year is Ephesians 3:9: “…to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things…“
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After the two days he left for Galilee. (Now Jesus himself had pointed out that a prophet has no honor in his own country.)When he arrived in Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him. They had seen all that he had done in Jerusalem at the Passover Festival, for they also had been there.
Once more he visited Cana in Galilee, where he had turned the water into wine. And there was a certain royal official whose son lay sick at Capernaum. When this man heard that Jesus had arrived in Galilee from Judea, he went to him and begged him to come and heal his son, who was close to death.
“Unless you people see signs and wonders,” Jesus told him, “you will never believe.”
The royal official said, “Sir, come down before my child dies.”
“Go,” Jesus replied, “your son will live.”
The man took Jesus at his word and departed.While he was still on the way, his servants met him with the news that his boy was living.When he inquired as to the time when his son got better, they said to him, “Yesterday, at one in the afternoon, the fever left him.”
Then the father realized that this was the exact time at which Jesus had said to him, “Your son will live.” So he and his whole household believed.
This was the second sign Jesus performed after coming from Judea to Galilee. John 4: 43-54
Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe. Hebrews 11:1
Does the road wind up-hill all the way? Yes, to the very end.
Will the day’s journey take the whole long day? From morn to night, my friend.
But is there for the night a resting-place? A roof for when the slow dark hours begin.
May not the darkness hide it from my face? You cannot miss that inn.
Shall I meet other wayfarers at night? Those who have gone before.
Then must I knock, or call when just in sight? They will not keep you standing at that door.
Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak? Of labour you shall find the sum.
Will there be beds for me and all who seek? Yea, beds for all who come. ~Christina Rossetti “Up-Hill”
This life of ours can be an arduous and often troubled journey.
We might feel like we are never able to reach a point of rest in our uphill climb through obstacles and hazards. It can be so dark we’re not sure we can see the road, much less where we’re headed.
When a royal official makes the 20 hour journey uphill to find Jesus to ask him to heal and save his son, he surely was at a point of desperate need. He is so convinced by the stories of Jesus’ power to heal, he would go wherever needed to make that happen for his dying son.
Yet he discovers Jesus’ power is not just in His hands, but in His words.
Our faith is not just based on what we see with our eyes, but in our trust and belief in Jesus, who is the Word.
When we are faced with that up-hill journey through troubled times, we will not be left stranded, lost and waiting by the roadside. Many have gone on before us, and those faithful are ready and waiting to help walk alongside us and give us encouragement to keep going.
There is a place waiting for wayfarers like us.
Jesus speaks the healing of the son and the royal official takes Him at His Word.
No longer is that official merely politically powerful; he descends back down the road to his home spreading the word to all around him about the far greater power of Jesus.
There is salvation through the Word to those who believe. We all are weary travelers welcomed with open arms as the uphill road points us to the best home of all.
I am reading slowly through the words in the Book of John over the next year. Once a week, I will invite you to “come and see” what those words might mean as we explore His promises together.
Lyrics by Lori McKenna:
When the road under your feet is dark and feels wrong And you find yourself lost and all your confidence gone And the stars over your head through the clouds won’t be revealed I’ll walk with you, even if it’s uphill
When the weight of your troubles send your knees into the dirt And all your loyal distractions only magnify the hurt When lonesome doesn’t quite define how so alone you feel I’ll walk with you, even if it’s uphill
Hard times and landslides are part of life I know Like they say, none of us get out alive Whatever ocean you’re swimming across However valley low Whatever mountains you climb I’ll walk with you, even if it’s uphill
Blessed are the times filled with sun, surrounded by your friends Those days when all the new roads wait right where the old roads end And should you wake up to Everest right outside your windowsill I’ll walk with you even if it’s uphill
Hard times and landslides are part of life God knows We all got some mountains to climb Whatever ocean you’re swimming across However valley low I’m right here, I’ve been right here all this time And I’ll walk with you, even if it’s uphill I’ll walk with you, even if it’s uphill
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The world is indeed full of peril and in it there are many dark places. But still there is much that is fair. And though in all lands, love is now mingled with grief, it still grows, perhaps, the greater. — J. R. R. Tolkien from The Fellowship of the Ring
A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief Isaiah 53:3
Shut out suffering, and you see only one side of this strange and fearful thing, the life of man. Christ saw both sides. He could be glad, he could rejoice with them that rejoice; and yet the settled tone of his disposition was a peculiar and subdued sadness.
That gave the calm depth to the character of Christ; he had got the true view of life by acquainting himself with grief. ~Frederick Robertson from a 1846 sermon entitled Typified by the Man of Sorrows, the Human Race
An elderly mother/grandmother apparently kidnapped from her home is yet to be heard from.
And another school shooting takes hold of my heart and breaks it.
Our sorrows fill a chasm so deep and dark that it is a fearsome thing to even peer from the edge. We join the helplessness of countless people in human history who have lived through times which appeared unendurable.
We don’t understand why inexplicable tragedy befalls good and gracious people, taking them when they are not yet finished with their work on earth.
From the unconscionable shootings of innocents, to quakes that topple buildings burying people, to waves that wipe out whole communities sweeping away thousands, to pathogens too swift and devastating for modern medicine —
we are reminded every day: we live on perilous ground and our time here has always been finite.
We don’t have control over the amount of time, but we do have control over how extensively our compassion for others is heard and spread.
There is assurance in knowing we do not weep alone; our Lord is acquainted with grief.
Our grieving is so familiar to a suffering God who too wept at the death of a beloved friend, when He faced a city about to condemn Him to death and He was tasked with enduring the unendurable.
There is comfort in knowing He too peered into the chasm of darkness; He willingly entered its depths to come to our rescue.
His has an incomparable capacity for Light, bringing to the world a Love that lasts an eternity.
Lyrics:
Angels, where you soar Up to God’s own light Take my own lost bird On your hearts tonight; And as grief once more Mounts to heaven and sings Let my love be heard Whispering in your wings ~Alfred Noyes
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I alternate between thinking of the planet as home – dear and familiar stone hearth and garden – and as a hard land of exile in which we are all sojourners. ~Annie Dillard from Teaching a Stone To Talk
We all long for Eden, and we are constantly glimpsing it: our whole nature at its best and least corrupted, its gentlest and most human, is still soaked with the sense of exile. ~J.R.R. Tolkien, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien
Wraiths of mist suddenly moving like serpents of the air would coil about them for a second. Grey damp would be around them, and the sun, a copper penny, would fade away. The wings next to their own wings would shade into vacancy, until each bird was a lonely sound in cold annihilation, a presence after uncertain. And there they would hang in chartless nothing, seemingly without speed or left or right or top or bottom, until as suddenly as ever the copper penny glowed and the serpents writhed. Then, in a moment of time, they would be in the jewelled world once more: a sea under them like turquoise and all the gorgeous palaces of heaven new created, with the dew of Eden not yet dry. ~T.H. White from The Once and Future King
The Lord your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing. I will rescue the lame; I will gather the exiles. I will give them praise and honor in every land where they have suffered shame. At that time I will gather you; at that time I will bring you home. Zephaniah 3: 17, 19-20
I, like everyone on this earth, am only a sojourner, seemingly settled, yet certainly not lasting. As a garden flourishes in the dew and then dies back, so will I.
This is exile in the wilderness until we are taken back home. He has sent His Son to fetch us.
Home. Really home. A place of no fading or withering.
Each of us etched on His heart, created in His image, held fast in His Hand, and led back home.
Lyrics:
The barren land around me lies My flame is burning low Cold and pale the winter skies And I am far from home. With my light that burns so dim, Am I visible to Him? Does He hear the fragile song of creatures here below?
He wakes the lark and bids her fly To greet the coming spring, Wakes our hearts and bids us rise Then gives our spirits wing. He speaks, and winter melts away, Hears us when we come to pray, Turns our nighttime into day – Our Light, our Life, our King.
Glorious joy of summer sun, The gentle healing rain, Banishing our tears and sighs, With beauty for our pain. Earth and sky, lay glory by- Christ the Lord is drawing nigh! All creation, bow to Him From whom all blessings flow!
Blows the wind, and soon will come The autumn of the year With its golden light of love Still shining ever clear. From the rising of the sun To the place where day is done, Peace on earth has now begun To cast away our fear. -Johanna Anderson, 2018
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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?”
Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?” They came out of the town and made their way toward him. John 4:27-30
The woman is isolated and shunned by her community, which is why she comes to the well at noon and not in the cool of the morning or evening with the other women. She sees nothing but problems and barriers at first: the divisions of race and religion, the practical problem of the deep well, of having no buckets — and then the living presence of Jesus changes everything.
We see him through the icon, with one hand on his heart, the other on the water, himself the living connection between the two. Gazing at the icon, we see that the living water is already at the brim of the well. Has his presence drawn it up from the depths, or is it in fact flowing from him into the well, and not the other way round? Certainly, everything is reversed for the woman, and she who had to walk away from her village to find an outer source of refreshment will soon herself be a centre of renewal and be spreading good news in community. ~Malcolm Guite “Poet’s Corner” from Church Times
Some ask the world and are diminished in the receiving of it. You gave me only this small pool that the more I drink from, the more overflows me with sourceless light. ~ R. S. Thomas “Gift” from Experimenting with an Amen
..my heart leaps in wonder. Cold, fresh, deep, I feel the word water spelled in my left palm… opening the doors of the world… ~Denise Levertov from “The Well”
I approach the well with shame, in the heat of the day, not wanting to speak or be spoken to…
Yet this man, waiting there, asks for water asks for my help asks, despite of who I am and what I have done.
Then he offers to me what I could not give him: knowing my life and my shame he opens the door to the rest of my life, having no more thirst.
Could this be?
My heart leaping in wonder, now I must tell everyone I know…
I am reading slowly through the words in the Book of John over the next year. Once a week, I will invite you to “come and see” what those words might mean as we explore His promises together.
A dishwater sky mutes sun’s rays to gray, the hills leading to the pass forested in haze, drained of green. Though a steady bluster, the wind musters nothing but silence. The plodding sound of melt drip, drip, drips from the askew rusted rain gutter outside my purview. Perhaps, I have all my life been too much in love with sadness. ~Lana Hectman Ayers from “Window in Late January” from Autobiography of Rain
A silence slipping around like death, Yet chased by a whisper, a sigh, a breath, One group of trees, lean, naked and cold, Inking their crest ‘gainst a sky green-gold, One path that knows where the corn flowers were; Lonely, apart, unyielding, one fir; And over it softly leaning down, One star that I loved ere the fields went brown. ~Angelina Weld Grimke “A Winter Twilight”
I am astonished by my thirst for clinging to sadness when a gray day asks so little of me.
Good thing I’m shaken from my melancholy by such simple moments as a twilight shimmering gold, a burst of unexpected evening birdsong, a steadfast fir standing unyielding on our hilltop, where it glimpses the edge of tomorrow as today’s dusky horizon fades away.
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Don’t worry, spider, I keep house casually. ~Kobayashi Issa (translation by Robert Hass)
There’s a web like a spider’s web, Made of silk and light and shadows, Spun by the moon in my room at night. It’s a web made to catch a dream, Hold it tight ’til I awaken, As if to tell me, my dream is all right. ~Lyrics of Spider’s Web Folk Song (see below)
You have been my friend. That in itself is a tremendous thing. I wove my webs for you because I liked you. After all, what’s a life, anyway? We’re born, we live a little while, we die. A spider’s life can’t help being something of a mess, with all this trapping and eating flies. By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone’s life can stand a little of that. ~E. B. White, from Charlotte’s Web
In cool descent and loyal hearted, She spins a ladder to the place From where she started.
Thus I, gone forth as spiders do In spider’s web a truth discerning, Attach one silken thread to you For my returning. ~E.B. White from “Natural History”
Silk-thin silver strings woven cleverly into a lair, An intricate entwining of divinest thread… Like strands of magic worked upon the air, The spider spins his enchanted web – His home so eerily, spiraling spreads.
His gossamer so rigid, yet lighter than mist, And like an eight-legged sorcerer – a wizard blest, His lace, like a spell, he conjures and knits; I witnessed such wild ingenuity wrought and finessed, Watching the spider weave a dream from his web. ~Jonathan Platt“A Spider’s Web”
…humanity is like an enormous spider web, so that if you touch it anywhere, you set the whole thing trembling…
As we move around this world and as we act with kindness, perhaps, or with indifference, or with hostility, toward the people we meet, we too are setting the great spider web a-tremble. The life that I touch for good or ill will touch another life, and that in turn another, until who knows where the trembling stops or in what far place and time my touch will be felt.
Our lives are linked together. No man is an island. ~Frederick Buechner from The Hungering Dark
I’ve had a new friend for several months now, beginning in late fall and into winter. She lives in our bathroom, in a terraced silken network between the cabinet and the back of the toilet.
This is someone with only one request: we leave her home undisturbed during our brief visits.
And so I have. Normally I would be brushing visible cobwebs down in my quick cleans, but when I noticed this co-habiter back in November as the weather got chilly, I couldn’t help but think “Charlotte” and the ordinary miracles of creatures like her.
So there she stays as I await a profound web message from her.
Instead of messages, she is extending her network in the hope of catching what little insect life there is in a winter house. Her web does get some misting when we shower or bathe, so she has the moisture she needs to thrive. She goes on reconnaissance missions of her little tiled kingdom — there are small webs laced into most of the corners, above the tub and behind the door.
I really can’t see that she eats often; my research says she doesn’t need much. So we will co-exist as long as she wants to stay, although when spring comes, I know a front porch bench that will be a far better source of regular meals. And then I can do a little deeper clean of the crevices in the bathroom.
I hope she might agree to move on at that point. That is, unless she writes me a web message asking to stay “linked in.”
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With Cats, some say, one rule is true: Don’t speak till you are spoken to. Myself, I do not hold with that – ~T.S. Eliot from “The Ad-Dressing of Cats”
A true story I wrote 15 years ago…
Considering myself a Dr. Doolittle of sorts, always talking to the animals, I reach out to pet a stray cat sitting quietly outside our barn one evening while doing barn chores. This is a grayish fluffy cat I see around the barns every few months or so–he doesn’t put in frequent appearances and reminds me of a kitten we raised on this farm a few years back, though his markings are a bit different, so I know it is not our cat.
We have 6 cats to pet here who claim “us” as their home and family, so there is no lack of fur balls to love. There are probably that many more who hang out, now and then, considering our farm fair game and looking for an occasional free meal. This cat just seemed to need a reassuring pat at that moment – or maybe I needed the reassurance.
Wrong.
I found myself with a cat attached to my wrist by teeth and claws. It took a bit of an effort to shake him off and he escaped into the night. I then surveyed the damage he inflicted and immediately went to wash my wounds. They were deep punctures near my wrist joint–not good. Lucky for me I was up to date on my tetanus booster.
By the next day the wounds were getting inflamed and quite sore. I know all too well the propensity of cat bites to get badly infected with Pasteurella multocida, a “bad actor” bacteria that can penetrate deep tissues and bone if not treated with aggressive antibiotics. After getting 6 opinions from my colleagues at clinic, all of whom stood solemnly shaking their heads at my 12 hour delay in getting medical attention, I surrendered and called my doctor’s office. I pleaded for a “no visit” prescription as I was up to my eyeballs in my own patients, and he obliged me. I picked up the antibiotic prescription during a break, sat in the car ready to swallow the first one and then decided to wait a little longer before starting them, knowing they wallop the gut bacteria and cause pretty nasty side effects. I wanted to see if my own immune system might just be sufficient.
So the bacterial infection risk was significant and real but I was prepared to deal with it. For some reason I didn’t really think about the risk of rabies until the middle of the night when all dark and depressing thoughts seem to come real to me.
I don’t know this cat. I doubt he has an owner and it is highly unlikely he is rabies vaccinated. My own cats aren’t rabies vaccinated (and neither am I) though if I was a conscientious owner, they would be. Yes, we have bats in our barns and woods and no, there has not been a rabid bat reported in our area in some time.
But what if this cat were potentially infected with the rabies virus but not yet showing symptoms? Now my mind started to work overtime as any good neurotic will do. Last summer a rabid kitten in North Carolina potentially exposed 10 people when it was passed around a softball tournament, no one aware it was ill until it died and was tested. Lots of people had to have rabies shots as a result.
This cat who had bitten me was long gone–there was no finding him in the vast woods and farmland surrounding us. He couldn’t be kept in observation for 10 days and watched for symptoms, nor could he be sacrificed to examine his neural tissue for signs of the virus.
I called the health department to ask what their recommendation was in a case like this. Do they recommend rabies immune globulin injection which should have been done as soon as possible after the bite? I talked with a nurse who read from a prepared script for worried people like me.
Feral cats in our area have not been reported to have rabies nor have skunks or raccoons. Only local bats have been reported to have rabies but not recently. This cat would have had to have been bitten by a rabid bat to be rabid. This was considered a “provoked” attack as I had reached out to pet the cat. This was not a cat acting unusually other than having wrapped itself around my arm. No, the Health Dept would not recommend rabies immune globulin in this situation but I was free to contact my own doctor to have it done at my own expense if I wished to have the series of 5 vaccination shots over the next month at a cost of about $3000. Yes, there would be a degree of uncertainty about this and I’d have to live with that uncertainty but she reassured me this was considered a very low risk incident.
I knew this was exactly what I would be told and I would have counseled any patient with the same words. Somehow it is always more personal when the risk of being wrong has such dire consequences.
I could see the headlines “Local Doctor Dies From Rabid Cat Bite”.
This is not how I want to be remembered.
Rabies is one of the worst possible ways to die. The cases I’ve read about are among the most frightening I’ve ever seen in the medical literature. Not only is it painful and horrific but it puts family and care providers at risk as well. It also has an unpredictable incubation period of a up to a month or two, even being reported as long as a year after an exposure. What a long time to wait in uncertainty. It also has a prodrome of several days of very nonspecific symptoms of headache, fever and general malaise, like any other viral infection before the encephalitis and other bad stuff hits. I was going to think about it any time I had a little headache or chill. This was assuredly going to be a real test of my dubious ability to stifle my tendency for 4-dimensional worries.
I decided to live with the low risk uncertainty and forego the vaccination series. It was a pragmatic decision based on the odds. My wounds slowly healed without needing antibiotics. For ten days I watched for my attacker cat whenever I went to the barn, but he didn’t put in an appearance. I put out extra food and hoped to lure him in. It would have been just be so nice to see his healthy face and not have to think about this gray cloud hanging over me for the next few months, as I wondered about every stray symptom.
No gray kitty to be seen.
Almost a month has gone by now and he finally showed up last night. I could have grabbed him and hugged him but I know better now. No more Dr. Doolittle.
He is perfectly fine and now so am I, cured of a terminal case of worry and hypochondria which is not nearly as deadly as rabies but can be debilitating and life shortening none the less.
From now on, I’ll be contented to just “talk to the animals” like any good Dr. Doolittle. I don’t need to cuddle them.
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Eighteen years ago this week, a college student was brought to our university health clinic by his concerned roommates, as he seemed to be getting sicker with that winter’s seasonal influenza. His family gave permission for his story to be told.
Nothing was helping. Everything had been tried for a week of the most intensive critical care possible. A twenty year old man – completely healthy only two weeks previously – was dying and nothing could stop it.
The battle against a sudden MRSA (Methicillin Resistant Staph Aureus) pneumonia precipitated by a routine seasonal influenza infection had been lost. Despite aggressive hemodynamic, antibiotic, antiviral and ventilator management, he was becoming more hypoxic and his renal function was deteriorating. He was no longer responsive to stimuli.
The intensivist looked weary and defeated. The nurses were staring at their laps, unable to look up, their eyes tearing. The hospital chaplain reached out to hold this young man’s mother’s shaking hands.
After a week of heroic effort and treatment, there was now clarity about the next step.
Two hours later, a group gathered in the waiting room outside the ICU doors. The average age was about 21; they assisted each other in tying on the gowns over their clothing, distributed gloves and masks. Together, holding each other up, they waited for the signal to gather in his room after the ventilator had been removed and he was breathing without assistance. They entered and gathered around his bed.
He was ravaged by this sudden illness, his strong body beaten and giving up. His breathing was now ragged and irregular, sedation preventing response but not necessarily preventing awareness. He was surrounded by silence as each individual who had known and loved him struggled with the knowledge that this was the final goodbye.
His father approached the head of the bed and put his hands on his boy’s forehead and cheek. He held this young man’s face tenderly, bowing in silent prayer and then murmuring words of comfort:
It is okay to let go. It is okay to leave us now. We will see you again. We’ll meet again. We’ll know where you will be.
His mother stood alongside, rubbing her son’s arms, gazing into his face as he slowly slowly slipped away. His father began humming, indistinguishable notes initially, just low sounds coming from a deep well of anguish and loss.
As the son’s breaths spaced farther apart, his dad’s hummed song became recognizable as the hymn of praise by John Newton, Amazing Grace. The words started to form around the notes. At first his dad was singing alone, giving this gift to his son as he passed, and then his mom joined in as well. His sisters wept. His friends didn’t know all the words but tried to sing through their tears. The chaplain helped when we stumbled, not knowing if we were getting it right, not ever having done anything like this before.
Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, That saved a wretch like me. I once was lost but now am found, Was blind, but now I see.
Through many dangers, toils and snares I have already come; ‘Tis Grace that brought me safe thus far and Grace will lead me home.
Yea, when this flesh and heart shall fail, And mortal life shall cease, I shall possess within the veil, A life of joy and peace.
When we’ve been here ten thousand years Bright shining as the sun. We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise Than when we’ve first begun.
And he left us.
His mom hugged each sobbing person there–the young friends, the nurses, the doctors humbled by powerful pathogens. She thanked each one for being present for his death, for their vigil kept through the week in the hospital as his flesh and heart had failed.
This young man, now lost to this mortal life, had profoundly touched people in a way he could not have ever predicted or expected. His parents’ grief, so gracious and giving to the young people who had never confronted death before, remains unforgettable.
This was their sacred gift to their son – so Grace could lead him home.
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Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John (although Jesus himself did not baptize, but only his disciples),he left Judea and departed again for Galilee.
And he had to pass through Samaria. So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph.Jacob’s well was there; so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour.
A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.)
Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying 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 water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.”
Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again,but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”
Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.”The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.”The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. 20 Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you 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 on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father.You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him.God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.”
Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.” John 4: 1-26
Others taunt me with having knelt at well-curbs Always wrong to the light, so never seeing Deeper down in the well than where the water Gives me back in a shining surface picture Me myself in the summer heaven godlike Looking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs. Once, when trying with chin against a well-curb, I discerned, as I thought, beyond the picture, Through the picture, a something white, uncertain, Something more of the depths—and then I lost it. Water came to rebuke the too clear water. One drop fell from a fern, and lo, a ripple Shook whatever it was lay there at bottom, Blurred it, blotted it out. What was that whiteness? Truth? A pebble of quartz? For once, then, something. ~Robert Frost “For Once Then Something”
Recently, we tried having a new well dug on our farm after our well water became discolored and undrinkable after a week of very heavy rains.
It is a very deep decades-old well with a protective casing that was failing. The well diggers tried to hit water in the same aquifer only a few yards from the original well – yet, despite drilling even deeper, the hole remained dry. Our effort at fresh water was futile. Instead, with no other affordable options, we did what we could to repair the original well, hoping to give it new life, along with a robust filtration system so we would have fresh water.
We are a worshiping people who peer into a well hole, expecting it to deliver what we need, when we need it. We end up worshiping our own distorted reflection, rather than what is needed to sustain life. We are lost, only looking deep into the depths of the ground, rather than seeking the depths of spirit and truth.
When we admit our own blindness and need for rescue, we are promised living water to quench our never-ending thirst.
Instead of “for once then something,” we are given “forever, now, salvation.”
I am reading slowly through the words in the Book of John over the next year. Once a week, I will invite you to “come and see” what those words might mean as we explore His promises together.
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Monthly
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