Nearing the end of the year, I have always felt like a runner who has spent everything in the race. My lungs are aching for air. My legs are screaming with the build-up of lactic acid. My mind demands a cessation to this torture. But the race is not over yet. Rather than let up and recover the end of the year drives us to run harder. In times of great physical, emotional, or spiritual tiredness it is difficult to choose kindness when it asks more of us.
Jesus once travelled through Samaria on his way from Judea to Galilee. He stopped in a little town called Sychar. Sychar happened to be the location of Jacob’s well. “Jesus, as tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well” (John 4:6). He did this while his disciples went grocery shopping. Then a most peculiar thing happens. He strikes up a conversation with a Samaritan woman! Not only that, but this woman had a particularly bad history and reputation. Jesus asks her for a drink even though receiving water was never his goal. He was not there to receive comfort but to offer it.
Perhaps Jesus did not stop at the well because he was tired from his long journey. Rather, despite his tiredness, Jesus stopped at the well in order to do a kindness for a woman in desperate need of God’s salvation. Not only this woman benefits, but also many other Samaritans in the area come to meet and believe the Savior of the world. These people had been excluded from proper worship in Jerusalem, but Jesus brings the presence of God to them despite his tiredness.
You may say, “I’m not Jesus. I’m only human.” Yes, you are only human. But you are still human. I urge you, therefore, to follow in the footsteps of our peculiar Jesus. I urge you to trust in his provision when you are tired and kindness is the last thing you feel. I urge you, despite your tiredness, to sit down by the well to offer something that will change another’s life.
Rev. Drew Haynes, Pastor of Campus Operations
