Quick Summary:

We all have a backstory. Among its features—shame-inducing experiences and the times when we’ve fallen short of the expectations of others. Poet Robert Bly calls it “the long bag we drag behind us.”

Today we meet a Samaritan woman at the well. What’s her backstory? What things has she been stuffing into that long bag she drags around behind her? Suggestions that she has been sexually promiscuous are not supported by the text.

In John's gospel, “Seeing” is all-important and is often connected to believing, i.e. having faith. Jesus gives the woman the gift of SEEING HER, and in response she SEES him as a prophet-truth speaker, and this allows their conversation to go even deeper.

At its core, this story of Jesus and the woman of Samaria is a story of the transforming and boundary crashing power of love and the capacity to receive and to live into a new identity. This power is available to you today.