Taking the Party to the Streets

I love having a beverage at my side. Coffee, tea, diet coke, lattes, beer, bubbly water — I have a special container for them all. 

Often, I reach for any of these when what I really need is water - plain, simple, refreshing water.   

It’s foolishness that in the time and place I live that I would become dehydrated, yet I do. I could turn a dial and what my body needs flows freely. Long ago, there was a woman who had to walk to a well, in the heat of the day, to get the water her body needed, but she ended up with far more than she had ever considered.

This woman from Samaria comes to the well in isolation instead of with the women from her village. Jesus is aware of why she comes alone. He already knows us; He already knows her before He asks her for anything. 

In the age of social media and google, we have copious amounts of information about people we have never met. My husband and I met online, so I think the internet is a wonderful tool for meeting people. Before we went on our first date, I looked at his Facebook page, pages of people who interacted with him, and pictures he was tagged in. I googled his name. I learned he was the Agarama king during Snow Week and his wrestling stats from high school.

I had a lot of information, but I did not know him. 

I hadn’t walked down the roads of life with him. Now, I have walked roads with him for 10 years and I am still getting to know him. The longer we walk together, the more we know of each other.

Jesus will always know each of us better than we know one another, and better than we know ourselves. 

Jesus has been doing more than researching us. He created us and He has been with us on every road. He knows who we are and what we need. Jesus knew everything about the Samaritan woman. He knew why she was coming to the well in isolation and the reason for the isolation. If you are in isolation, He knows. If you have walked a shameful road, He knows that too. He knows and He provides living water for every hurt, every disgrace.

The living water He provides created something in her that I can never get from caffeine or whisky. She runs into the community she was isolated from and tells them of Jesus. Her feet run into the community because she is known, because she is loved, and because she has been provided for.

Because we are known, loved, and provided for, we can praise and proclaim on the streets of our hometowns.

I often reach for things less than Jesus as tools to ‘motivate me’ to go into my community, like a good self-help book, a motivational speaker, or some kind of reward for myself. Those tools will never spur me on to proclaim the goodness of Jesus like what He provides for us.  Those tools may even have the opposite effect. They feel inauthentic or fake. They may leave us feeling dry, hopeless, and in isolation because they are just things and not a relationship with Jesus.

Just like when I reach for a third cup of coffee instead of hydrating with water, when I reach for things other than Jesus I am never satisfied or nourished. But Jesus, He brings us out of isolation. He wants to know us and be known by us.

This back and forth of being known and loved is where the real party is at.

It may even lead us running out of isolation and into community because Jesus, this Living Water, He’s always the Life of the party.

Up Next: Living Life in Party Hats

In the Meantime: Pick up a print book or study from the Books & Studies tab at the top of the page.