Jesus Speaks to Women: Where's Your Husband?

16 Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” John 4: 16

This week was my husband's birthday.  We celebrated one of those, how shall I put it? Milestone-type-birthdays!? Yes, it was a biggie.  And I praise the Lord for allowing him to be by my side still.  By now, we have shared more than half of our lives together.  When I look back at our beginnings, I realize what babies we were.  I mean, I know, some couples start their history way before we did.  But, I still remember when I met Dan, I felt as if I was already old.  However, it has taken me actually being old, to understand how young I truly was back then...

The riddles of life...sigh...

In spite of our disagreements and arguments about nothing, I do cherish every minute God has given me to spend with the man He designed to be my husband on this earth.  For better or for worse, I know it was a God thing the fact that we ended up together.  

I was never one of those girls who dreamed about her wedding and her prince charming.  I was more into material things.  I daydreamed about an apartment in the city, a cool car, fashion, purses and shoes.  Deep...I know... I spent countless hours seeing in my mind the furniture and the distribution of my house in the heights, overlooking skyscrapers and the ocean as a backdrop.  But, I can honestly say, I never pictured me sharing that fabulous home in the sky with a husband, living the mundane existence of an ordinary life.

God's plan, however, has unfolded very differently from my distant, adolescent dreams so far...

but, that's OK.  Reality doesn't diminish the value of my, once-upon-a-time fantasies.  We all have them, right?  So did the Samaritan woman, I'm sure!  And, I'm willing to bet, that in her memory, it still lingered the fainting thrill of the vanishing dreams of her youth.  

When life was simple, and she went to the well to fetch water for her Mom, I'm sure she never imagined life would turn out the way it did.  I'm sure she never imagined either, that one day she would have a divine appointment with the Redeemer of Her Soul.

The peculiar question that Jesus asks her after she requests of Him that water He promised would never make her thirsty again, is mind-boggling.  Why, of all things, did Jesus ask her to go call her husband and then return to this place?  It seems like such an out-of-the-blue random thing to say...but...we know better than that, don't we?  We know that with Our Lord, nothing is really random or unrelated.  Everything makes perfect sense.  The thing is that to understand it, we need to have His mind, and, unfortunately, we do not.

The blessing is, however, that in His mercy, Jesus allows us to have a peek at His thoughts.  As He explains or as He allows dialogues to develop, if we pay attention, He reveals His purposes.  In this case, the reason for Him to bring up the husband issue is the need to have an open recognition of our sin.  Like Jon Courson says in his commentary of this verse:  "There's no true conversion without conviction."  

Jesus brought the sin in this woman's life to the forefront, not to humiliate her, but to heal her.  We cannot be completely free if we continue to hide our life of sin.  The Searcher of Our Hearts uncovers the deepest darkness so He can vanish it with His Light!

As we continue to witness this encounter between Jesus and the Samaritan woman, I wonder what would my life have been like without my husband?  Had I obtained all the stupid things I used to dream about in my youth, where would I be now? What would I be writing about? What would be the state of my soul? What would my heart be chasing for?

I don't really want to answer those questions, because I already know...and the unspoken truth makes me shudder...but it also makes me Praise Him all the more for my shattered teen fantasies.

May the Holy Spirit show us The Way, The Truth and the Life that are only found in Jesus Christ! Amen!