The pastor was out of town and we had one of the back ups in the pulpit. He was preaching on John 4 and the encounter of Jesus with the Samaritan woman at the well. He lifted out a couple of verses that I know I have read many times but I don’t remember noticing,
John 4:3-4 (KJV) 3 He left Judaea, and departed again into Galilee. 4 And he must needs go through Samaria.Jesus is going from Judea in the south to Galilee in the north. In between was Samaria. Jews and Samaritans did not get along. Jews would usually go the long way around if they had to take this trip. It was doable and a regular path. For some reason Jesus had a “need” to go directly.
No, He didn’t. There was a recognized path to avoid polluting yourself by passing through Samaria. “Needs” here does not mean that there was no option. It means that He had a compelling reason that He did not share. All I can conclude is that He needed to run into the woman at the well and share the good news with her and her village.
We need to keep that in mind as we go through our day and run into situations that we would rather avoid. There are times when God has plans that we are not privy to. It is hard to know when we should press for change and when we should accept but we need to have a basic understanding that God often has multiple goals and we might not know any of them.
Be faithful. Walk upright. Live a righteous life and trust that He has more irons in the fire than He cares to share with us.
homo unius libri
No comments:
Post a Comment
Comments are welcome. Feel free to agree or disagree but keep it clean, courteous and short. I heard some shorthand on a podcast: TLDR, Too long, didn't read.