MARCH MOMENTS N0. 3

BRIEF ENCOUNTER BY JACOB'S WELL

(Third of Lent - John, 4:5-42)

" Men", she thought, "they're all the same". "As long as they have someone who will go to bed with them and fetch water from the well for them, they're happy." She should know, her present "live-in" was number six. Why her life had turned out like this she couldn't say, but it had. And now here she was, a middle-aged woman, doing her daily trek to the well, the water-bucket a more intimate part of her life than any of the men she had known.

Hello, someone at the well before her! Unusual at this time of day and would you believe it, a man? Jewish, judging by his dress. There won't be any talk from him. Snooty lot, they have no time for us Samaritans. See if I care, I'll ignore him, just get my water and go.

"Give me a drink". The man is plainly tired, and the words are softly spoken, yet they come as a shock. His accent is Galilean, they're not quite as high and mighty as the Judean sort, but still she shows her surprise. "You a Jew speak to me, a Samaritan." And so it begins! There in the baking heat, in this place of her daily drudgery, she meets and is met by a man who is different, a man who will turn her world around.

Over the waters of the well she bandies words and wisdom with him, giving, she thinks, as good as she gets. He makes no attempt to outpace her arguments, but his calm un-accusing directness, undoes all her attempts to be clever. She has been down this road before but it's never been like this. Suddenly, she it is who feels like a stranger, out of her depth at her own well.

Goodness! How many times has she come here and rested, before lowering the bucket? How often has she gazed into the cool depths of the water, searching the mirror image it offered her? The well must have dragged her many a weary mile over the years, but it has had its moments too. At least here, at this time of day, while others rested, she could be alone. She could count her wrinkles on the waters skin, throw out her hair and smile to think that men still found her desirable. Sometimes she would lapse into a little daydream, action-replaying the happy moments of her disordered life. But no harm done, she could leave her fantasies behind her as easily as she walked away from the well. Once in a while she would even allow herself the luxury of dreaming how things could yet turn out. Chance might indeed be a fine thing.

And was this merely "Chance", this man at her well? This was different. Oh, never mind the talk of worship and Holy Mountains. That had merely been her way of trying to distract him. He had let her come to know herself in a way that gazing into the well would never have done. This was something she would not want to leave behind her in the silent depths of the pool. There was no need to daydream, or long for an escape; for all its chaos her past could be a new beginning. Suddenly she was aware that he was giving her a drink, quenching a thirst she had been trying to ignore.

Back in the town and out of breath, she found the courage to call out; "Come and see a man who has told me everything I ever did". Previously she would not have dared. They knew too much about her already for her to risk further ridicule. But now it just didn't seem to matter anymore. And the change in her was so obvious that it wasn't simply a taste for gossip that sent them out to meet the stranger at the well.

She knew what they would be like when they came back, excited just as she was. They wouldn't give her the credit, men are not like that, and in any case she had a feeling that it was not she who had found the stranger by the well: he had found her.