You know the ins and outs of the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman.  The scandal of talking with a woman, who’s also a Samaritan.  Jews and Samaritans distrust each other, and don’t mix well even on a good day.

One detail in John 4 jumps off the page at me.  It’s found in verse 28–“So the woman left her water jar and went away into town and said to the people, ‘Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did.  Can this be the Christ?'”

She left her water jar.  How strange.  She needs water and this well is exactly where it can be found.  Little or no indoor plumbing in those days, so she needs that water jar.  She’d place it on her head, walking it home.  But not this time.

A wise move on her part?  Hardly.  Will require an extra trip, hoping that someone hasn’t snatched it away.  Did she misunderstand Jesus’ comments about ‘living water’ (John 4: 10)?  Those promises that His H2O would never run out?  That ‘…whoever drinks of the water that I give him will never be thirsty again.  The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up… (John 4:14).  Did she get the wrong idea?  That water jars will no longer be needed?

Think back to when you accepted Jesus into your life.  Those early days.  On top of the world.  Far from disappointing valleys.  Safe and secure on some mountaintop.  But what about your own ‘water jar’, some things left behind?  Running after Jesus occupies your heart and mind overshadowing other things. Focusing decisions on what Jesus wants.  There’s a change in the air.

My plans to become a stockbroker get radically altered, as in out the window, when I attend summer school at a Bible college, actually studying God’s Word.  That’s a first for me.  That undergraduate degree in business administration gets left at the well, so to speak.  When living for Jesus some things get left behind, abandoned, and forgotten.  Other things we attend to in a new way.  Fashioning them with our eyes on the Master, for a change.

We’re not the same after meeting the risen Lord.  Far from it.  Not by a long shot.  That’s how you know you’re His.  Your target in life shifts…in God’s direction.

Before knowing the Savior, I could care less about ever attending church.  Why should I?  What’s the point?  A colossal waste of time.  But then after!  Couldn’t get enough of a new church that teaches the Bible, while singing songs that mirror my own experience of Jesus.  Funny thing…I still can’t.

Those are some of my thoughts about her water jar.  And yours?

Thank you, Jesus, for being my all in all.  Amen.