2016). DRAW

Written on February 10, 2016.

Jesus entered Samaria hunted and hounded by Pharisees, enraged that people were being drawn to Him. They had done all they could to draw Him as a rebel, renegade and a risk too great to take.

Yet, the people were not submitting to their calculated control. Instead of shunning and shying away, they found and followed. They wanted to be near Him, now matter how few there were or how far the journey led them. Inside His quiet voice was a shofar blast, dispensing seed to fertile fields and pouring a satisfying, satiating stream of supply upon them.

And now they were growing. Indelible. Wild. Inseparable. And He, Jesus, seemed to be able to draw them from the fear and frantic of the Pharisees and bring them present. From the fear of a “what could past” into the “what will now.”

From a land that would not offer Him home, into a foreign one that should not say welcome, He traveled. His journey had been much longer than this walk. His thirst peaked at fierce. But it was not a bucket in a well He would draw from, but the one beside it, bone dry.

The sight was one to which He was accustomed. For He had been the vision first. A tender sprout, in a dry land. Upon it an appearance warranting no desire from one only passing by. A sapling, so small, the distance to it made greater. An impossibility. For what could grow in a ground void of love and filled with loneliness? A seedling broken in the breeze, unable to implore notice or care or inspire hope that something mighty and majestic could come from it. From within it. From a well deep, untapped and unseen.

But He saw. Like magnet and moth, He was drawn. Compelled by her aching not yet stance and the counter cries of don’t pass by and do not enter. Upon her He came cradling the within her He recognized.

He asked for a drink. He was thirsty for her to be engulfed. She told Him He had nothing with which to draw from the too deep well. He revealed love’s ladle and dove. Deep enough to invite. Deeper still to tip the cup of her heart completely over. Deepest depths to draw her. Differently than she had every been portrayed.

In a moment that required notice, He cleansed her, washed her hands and feet. He stroked her face, touching the untouchable. And He said without saying. Rare and beautiful gems are laid upon dark backgrounds for the beholding of their beauty and for the belaying of their bound belief. He himself would soon lay upon darkness, ruddy with the mess of mankind. Beautiful Ransom. This day, He lay upon her darkness and filled it with beauty’s light.

Dunked and displayed and aglow, the Samaritan woman ran. Not from Him. For Him. A towering tree, branches swaying in praise, exalting the One who gloried her. Drawing Him so those encapsulated could be broken open too. “He told me everything I’ve ever done. And He touched me in spite of them. He touched me because of them. He looked into the darkness of my circumstances and found me there. And He wouldn’t, couldn’t leave me. He looked beyond and I know I had been ever before. And I could not, would not, look away.”

JOURNAL JUBILEE:
Today, this day, Jesus is thirsty. He seeks a drink from you. One that requires love’s ladle. He wants to tell you who you really, truly are. He wants to draw you how you really are, to HIM. He is not the King of caricature. He IS the king of revelation. Draw (write) what He reveals to you.
Drink deep.