Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: RESTORATION (12/03/20)
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TITLE: Woman at the Well | Previous Challenge Entry
By Sylvia Hensel
12/09/20 -
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Even this day, the man she was living with had taken his hand to her calling her names that burned within her. She thought she was past humiliation. She preten ded it had not hurt, but her spirit was wounded to the point where she had come to the end of herself. What was she to do? Where could she go? To whom could she turn? She had sold her body for so long she knew no other way. She was beyond weary; her whole being felt empty.
As Mayla neared the well, the women there scurried away as they wanted nothing to do with her. Her heart was heavy, but she tossed her head as though it mattered not that they shunned her. She wanted to weep, but knew she dare not. They would only mock her, and possibly spit on her. She could not take the ridicule in her present state of mind. All she wanted was a kind word and for someone to show compassion.
When she got to the well, she found a man sitting there whom she had not seen before. Had it been another time, Mayla would have flaunted herself before Him. However today her thoughts were bitter and her desire dead.
Mayla looked at the man and saw something in his eyes that caused her to know he was different than any she had ever known. There was a true love and compassion that flowed from him that overwhelmed her. As she let her jug down to draw water, he asked her for a drink. This shocked her she was a Samaritan and he a Jew. The two never spoke.
He began to speak of water not from that well but living water that would satisfy her thirst forever; that it would well up within her to eternal life. He then asked her asked her to go get her husband. For the first time in a long time she felt embarrassed, “I have no husband.” His answer amazed her. “You have had five husbands but the man you are with now is not your husband.”
Suddenly Maya received revelation, this man was the Messiah. Her shame brought her to her knees. In tears she expressed her desire to change.
Jesus saw the sincerity of the woman’s heart. He extended his hand to her and said “Arise, for your sins have been forgiven.” She lifted her eyes to his and saw unconditional love.
Immediately Mayla ran back to town a changed woman; a woman who no longer felt the shame and hopelessness she had just the previous hour. She stopped everyone in her path and told them about this man, Jesus.
Many jeered, and spoke unkind things to her, but she could not be angry. All Mayla could do was say, “You are right in what you say, but he, the Messiah, has forgiven me. I am changed; I am not the same. Go, see for yourself.” When she came to her own home, she approached the man whom she had been living with, “Come Josiah, you must see the man I met at the well,” she cried.
“You want me to meet another one of your prizes?” He growled.
“No! No!” she cries again. “It is the Messiah. He has come! He is here. Come see for yourself.”
The man, bleary eyed with too much wine, stopped to take another look at Mayla. What he saw was not the same woman who left him just an hour ago. This woman has a sense of peace about her; a beauty he had never seen in her before. “Could this be true?” He asked himself. “I must go see for myself.”
When he arrived, the villagers were listening with rapt attention, many weeping, some were kneeling before Jesus. Filled with rage, Josiah lifted his fist ready to strike Jesus, but at that moment, Jesus turned, and their eyes met. Immediately restoration flowed into Josiah’s heart. He was a new man. In an instant he had passed from sinner to saint.
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