Today, I am reading and commenting on  John 4-5.

Usually when we think about the Samaritan woman at the well we do not actually think about her.  We think about the fact that she was a Samaritan, and the issues with a Jew, especially a religious Jew, talking with a Samaritan.  Or, we think about the fact that she was a woman, and the issues with a religious Jewish man talking to a woman who was not his wife or his mother.  And sometimes we think about the fact that she was a Samaritan woman, and how that made combination exacerbated the two problems.  We do not think about the fact that the people of that town would have considered her a woman of low moral character; she had had five husbands and now was not married to the man she was living with.  The context makes it likely that at least several of her marriages had ended in some way other than the death of her husband.  Yet, this was the woman to whom Jesus chose to preach the Gospel in order to reach the people of her town.  More importantly, she was the right person to whom to preach the Gospel in order to reach the people of her town.  Of course, what makes this even more amazing, and more of a lesson for us, Jesus did not talk to her in order to preach the Gospel to the town.  He didn’t even talk to her in order to preach the Gospel to her.  No, both of those things happened because of what she said to Him and how He just replied with what came naturally to Him.  Jesus reached this town of Samaritans with the Gospel because He talked to a stranger who could do nothing for Him except damage His reputation.  The lesson on how to preach the Gospel: talk to strangers about every day things.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.