Story III: The Samaritan Woman at the Well
1. What struck you in the scene? Were there any new or surprising insights?
God both knows us completely and loves us completely.
When we experience this personally, our relationship with God
becomes more intimate and real.
2. Read John 4:5-26
5 Jesus came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.
7 A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” 8 (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) 9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) 10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” 11 The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12 Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” 13 Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” 15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”
16 Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come back.” 17 The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; 18 for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!” 19 The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. 20 Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you[c] say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” 21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” 25 The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.” 26 Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.”
Suggested Task: When have you experienced a time when you felt loved, known, or seen by God? Follow the instructions below to write a Three Sentence Story about that experience.
Testimony Haiku: Three Sentence Stories
“The mystery of story is this: everybody is one, everybody has some, and—given a conducive setting—everybody wants to tell theirs.” –John Shea
Instructions: Think of a time in your life when you felt loved, known, or seen by God. In a moment, we’re going to invite you to write that story down. But here’s the thing: All good stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end—so we’d like you to tell your story in just three sentences. This is a little bit of a challenge, so let me give you some examples of what I mean: These are stories that were written by people in other workshops or by Friends of the Groom staff.
I was on a plane in bad weather when something went wrong with the guidance system. The flight attendants told us to prepare for a crash landing, and we prayed for fifteen frightening minutes as the plane descended through clouds to finally touch down safely. We learned later that a small private jet in the area had gone ahead of us to guide us to the runway.
On a vacation near Lake Michigan, our family went looking for a private spot to watch the sunset. We discovered a road that dead-ended at a rocky beach, but when we climbed down to the water we found a small group of people—each of whom had been drawn to the place separately to see the view. For the next half hour, we all sat in reverent silence as the sun descended—an intimate crowd of strangers, united by a sense of the Presence that had arranged this sight for us.
My daughter Katie had been diagnosed with epilepsy at age 21, but had been incident free for a year when I got a call that she’d had another seizure five hours away. I found out later she’d been driving in her car alone for an hour, following friends for an outing to a lake. The seizure had come when they had pulled over for gas for 10 minutes, where she was 50 feet from friends in the safety of the parking lot.
Because I am four foot ten, weigh 85 pounds, and have several auto-immune diseases, the doctors told me I would not get pregnant. When I got pregnant, the doctors told me I was too small to carry the child to full term, and too weak for a Caesarian. I am now the mother of a healthy four-year old son.
You get the idea. So find a space where you can be by yourself. Take a deep breath and get relaxed, and then pray for the help of the Holy Spirit to bring to your mind an experience of being loved, known, or seen by God. Then work on writing that story in three concise sentences. When we gather back together, you’ll have a chance to read your story to the whole group. Of course, you don’t have to if you don’t want to. It’s always O.K. to pass.