Come and See

She was an unlikely candidate for the role.

The woman Jesus met at the well in Samaria was an outsider in almost every sense. As a Samaritan, she was despised by the Jewish culture of her day. As a woman, she would not have been expected to engage a strange man in theological conversation. And she came to the well alone, in the heat of midday — almost certainly to avoid the other women of her village.

She had a complicated past. She had every reason to keep her head down and her story to herself.

And yet.

When Jesus spoke to her — when he treated her as a full human being, worthy of honest conversation and genuine grace — something in her came alive. She began to see who he was. First a stranger, then perhaps a prophet, then something more. "Could this be the Messiah?" she wondered.

And before she had it all figured out, before her theology was tidy or her life sorted out, she ran back to her village and said the simplest thing imaginable: "Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done." (John 4:29)

Come and see.

Not a polished argument. Not a carefully prepared presentation. Just an honest word about a real encounter. And John tells us that many in that village believed — first because of her testimony, and then because they experienced it themselves.

We are all on a journey. At some point along the way, most of us cross a quiet threshold — where faith stops being something we've heard about from others, and becomes something we have actually experienced ourselves. Something we know. Something we carry.

And when that happens, we have something worth sharing.

You may feel like an unlikely evangelist. Most of us do. But you don't need a theology degree or a perfectly ordered life. You only need a story — and the willingness to say to someone who needs it: come and see.

Prayer: Lord Jesus, you met a woman at a well and changed the course of her life — and through her, the lives of many others. You work through the unlikely, the ordinary, the ones who least expect to have something to offer. Use us that way too. Give us the courage to share what we have experienced of your grace. And may the living water that has been given to us flow outward to those around us who are thirsty. Amen.

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