Today I had the privilege of sitting in reception at my
local food bank for two hours. A woman appeared as soon as we opened, handed
over her voucher and gratefully accepted a coffee and a chair while she waited
for things to be gathered together for her. Her address? A women’s refuge.
A local refuge from domestic violence and brutality. A haven.
A shelter. A roof over the head, but no food in the cupboard and no money in
the purse.
I think of Jesus asking a woman for a drink from the well. He
was thirsty and had no drinking cup. She did. He knew her situation. A sequence
of husbands, and now a live-in who was not a husband.
Call him, Jesus said. I’ve
got plenty of living water to go round.
No judgment or sermonising. Pure compassion. Compassion for
the people beside him. The people who were stumbling through life, dry and
thirsty as if in a desert. The well was full of fresh water but it did not
satisfy. That which Jesus could give, he gave. Call him, he said. Call the
whole village.
Wherever we are, we are in the mission field. Parched people
are everywhere. The woman went away with bags of food but what she needed most was
the living water.
Jesus was always ready to offer that restoring drink. Am I?
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