Let’s be the Unlikely Path

Something that I love about Jesus, is that He always took the unlikely path. Something else that I love about Jesus is that He knew His disciples were annoyed by that, and He did it anyways. My favorite unlikely path that Jesus took, at least one of my top five, is the one He took when He met the Samaritan woman. You see, normal Jewish people would just outright avoid Samaria. There are three regions, Judea, Samaria, and Galilee. When Jews would go from Judea to Galilee in either direction, they chose to go around Samaria all together. Jesus, as you might guess, did no such thing.

So, it was a hot day. Jesus was traveling through Samaria. His disciples had gone off to buy food. He was alone, so He decided to sit by a well. Suddenly, a woman, a Samaritan woman approached the well to draw water, and Jesus asks her for a drink. Okay, side note, you know how girls like to go to the restroom in big groups? There are a million theories of why we do this, but the point is that in general we like to stick together. Same thing with women at the well. Women would travel together to get water, so the fact that this woman was alone, in the middle of the HOT day, was weird. Keep that in mind.

So, Jesus asks her for a drink, and she challenges Him. She points out He is a Jew, and she is a Samaritan. (Their peoples didn’t exactly get along). Jesus though, sweet Jesus, tells her that if she knew who He was she would ask Him for a drink. The drink that Jesus would give would allow her to never thirst again. This woman immediately responds by asking Him for the water, so she might not have to draw water from that well again.

I invite you to read the story so you can feel the hurt in her voice. This is a woman, alone, on a hot day, carrying something to draw water with. She would have to carry the water back home in the middle of the day when no one would be out, so no one would see her. She asks for the water, not that she might not thirst, but so she might not have to come out again to draw water. This woman was looking for a way to hide.

The thing though, is that Jesus knows this. Did He wait for her to reach out to Him? No. She probably wouldn’t have. Instead, He takes an unlikely road to meet her. The story continues when He allows her to recognize her sin. Finally, when the woman tells Him she knows that a Messiah will come to explain everything, Jesus says, “I am He”.

How many times are we the woman by the well? How many times have we hid from the world ashamed of our sin? Jesus, still, comes to us in the unlikeliest of places to tell us, “I am Him. The person you are looking for, that’s Me”. I’ll tell you a story. So, one summer, I went with a friend to Colombia to do some mission work. Granted, she is five years younger, and so, closer to the age of the young people we were serving. However, it got under my skin that everyone, and I mean, everyone would tell her how beautiful she was. They would compliment her eyes. Goodness, they would even ask her out knowing she’d leave the country in a few days. I was happy for her, but my self-esteem dropped like a penny thrown from the Empire State Building. It dropped fast. It dropped hard.

Anyways, one of the ministries that we helped with was giving Catechism classes to some young people with different capacities. We had a lot of fun with them, and it really helped just seeing them smile. One day, as I was alone in the house practicing the songs for mass, one of the young men came to ring the door bell. As I opened it, he smiled with the most beautiful smile. He told me he was going to start ringing the bells for Mass. (The church was literally in front of the house where the nuns lived, and where we were staying). He took my hands, looked me in the eyes, and said, “I need you to know that you are absolutely beautiful”. He pulled me in for a tight hug before running off to ring the bells of the church.

Jesus takes unlikely paths to tell us we are loved. Sometimes though, Jesus asks us to be the unlikely path He takes to breathe life and goodness into the world. We need to be His hands and His feet. When you see some good needed to be done in the world, do it. When a random compliment lights up in you for someone you might or might not know, speak it out loud. Let’s be unlikely paths. Let’s be His hands and feet. Let’s be Jesus for whoever is the woman at the well in our lives. Because, here’s the thing. We might not remember that specific act of kindness we did that day. I can assure you though, whoever that act of kindness was for will remember it for the rest of their lives. Better yet, that act of kindness might be what draws them out of themselves to be the hands and feet of Jesus as well.