Happy Veteran's Day! I'm happy because my Internet connection appears to be working just wonderfully today, very much NOT like yesterday. Thank you for the invitation to lunch, but I think it will be stone cold this morning. It's amazing how much one can miss when the primary communication link is suddenly gone. Whooee! The Christmas catalogs and e-mails are really piling up in my house. It must be about time for... Veteran's day? Do you detect a note of desperation in some of the e-mail and television ads this year? Will the customers come? I don't know about you, but no one should depend on me to drive the economic recovery. I can't give anyone a job and I cannot take away their fear. But maybe now some companies are thinking about how dumb it was to put fifteen million potential customers out of work in the U.S. alone? Eh? Dumb! Greed will always come back to bite ya!
Alright, I think I'm done ranting at the wind there. It sure is nice to have an Internet connection again this morning. Snow too! We have our first snow on the ground this morning! It's time to head out for some photos.
Today, if I can remember which verse we are on...
Just then his disciples came back. They marveled that he was talking with a woman, but no one said, "What do you seek?" or, "Why are you talking with her?" John 4:27
Now someone might marvel if they caught me talking with a woman, but Jesus wasn't some recovering computer geek like me. Why would they marvel at Jesus talking with this woman? Back in the day, Jesus' day that is, I suspect that the traveling rabbis - would that be rabbies?- spoke only with the men of a village. We already know from other references that women in Jesus' day were treated at best like second class citizens, but more often like property. The woman was also a Samaritan and Jesus was a Jew, so their marveling may have been from the racism bred into them in Judea. Actually racism isn't bred into someone, but is taught by the parents and adults around the child as he or she is growing up. John notes that while the disciples wondered, none asked Jesus what was up with this marvelous thing.
Now a crowd of men, a mob of unruly disciples, is gathering around. What will the woman do? Soon to be surrounded by, ack!, a bunch of Jewish men! She.. drops her jug and flees!
So the woman left her water jar and went away into town and said to the people, John 4:28
Did you ever drive away a woman by your silence. Women often hate for men to be silent and the disciples were afraid or waiting for another of their group to ask Jesus what they all wanted to know. The woman may have simply not liked the silence that suddenly descended when the disciples came back. Or maybe she had some good news to spread... she did after all leave her water jar after making a special trip to the well.
"Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?" John 4:29
Did the woman still have some doubts about Jesus being the Messiah? Or did she use the question to put that possibility in the minds of those she spoke to. A tantalizing question to get them to look for themselves perhaps? What did Nathanael say when the disciples told him they had found the Messiah? "Yeah, right, what good ever came out of Nazareth?" (my paraphrase) The woman may have been convinced, but she didn't try to force the knowledge on the town. She told them what he had done for her and asked them to come find out for themselves. We often want to grab people and show off our knowledge of the Scriptures. But the good news is what Jesus has done for me, not how much I think I know.
Remember to hug a veteran today, and be sure to tell him or her how much Jesus loves us!
Bucky
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