Imagine the scene.  You are a Samaritan woman, and it is around noon time.  Here you are, going like you do every day to the well, but today, there is a strange man sitting there.  As you walk up, he demands that you fetch him a drink of water.  Recognizing him as a Jewish man, you are taken aback by his request and ask him why he is talking to you.  Instead of answering your question, the strange man replies that you should have asked for a drink from him and he would have given you “living water.”  Now thoroughly confused, you question why he is missing all of the necessary tools to draw water from the well.  Once again, the man is cryptic in his response and merely tells you that you will never be thirsty again if you drink from the “living water.”

Later in the story, told by John, the woman goes to her friends and tells them about this strange man who knew everything about her and says, “He cannot be the Messiah, can he?”  Jesus tries to convey to the woman that she must learn to place her trust in God and believe what Jesus says.

Personally, I felt like this woman four weeks ago.  This past January, my grandfather passed away.  He had been ill for about a year and a half, and yet his death was as painful as if he had died suddenly.  One minute he was here, and then he wasn’t.  Granddaddy was the first grandparent I have lost, and I didn’t know what it would feel like to go visit Grandmommy and not call it “Grandmommy and Granddaddy’s house.”  I felt robbed of a family member, and I could only think how unfair it was for God to cause this pain to me and my family. 

My indignation changed when we had Granddaddy’s memorial.  He had chosen to have a hymn sing with all of his friends and family in his honor because he had such a love for music, being a former church choir director and barbershop quartet member.  Once we were seated in the chapel, the minister stood up and started to talk about my grandfather.  At that moment, it hit me.  Granddaddy was gone.  He wasn’t going to be there to feed the ducks with me or complete the ever-impossible thousand piece puzzle, or even tell me once more how proud he was of me and my accomplishments.  It was hard to sit there as the wave of emotions flowed over me.  But then, the minister switched from talking about Granddaddy’s life to talking about the hymns we were about to sing.

She began by telling us that about a year ago Granddaddy started picking out the hymns and the exact verses he wanted sung at his memorial.  Each song conveyed a message about his journey with God towards the end of his life.  He started out with The Old Rugged Cross, a lament about hanging on to the old cross until one can find salvation in God.  This first hymn was the beginning of Granddaddy’s journey of placing his heart and soul in God’s hands.  Another song we sang was titled Standing on the Promises.  This hymn touched on the idea of how one must completely trust in God and have the strength in one’s faith to rely on the promises of God.  The service ended with How Great Thou Art, another hymn that encompassed the theme of Granddaddy’s growth, and it gave me reassurance that he moved onto heaven and was watching us sit there singing.  By the end of the service, I came to understand that Granddaddy fully trusted in God towards the end of his life.  From this realization, my pain healed a little around the edges.  I hadn’t lost my grandfather entirely; he lived on in the music we sang and continue to sing every day.  Granddaddy had full trust in God’s will and is most likely singing in a barbershop choir in heaven to this day. 

Granddaddy’s trust in God is exactly what Jesus is trying to get the Samaritan woman to achieve. God’s same goal can be applied to me and to all of us. Through our faith, God builds a support system for each one of us. Now, he is calling on us to take that leap of faith and place our trust fully in our Lord. Jesus asks the woman to get him a drink, which catches her off guard.  He is asking her to trust in him from the beginning without knowing anything about him.  This is similar to Granddaddy’s acceptance of his death and traveling on into the unknown world of eternal life. Like in the hymn Standing on the Promises, we must “listen every moment to the Spirit’s call” and “rest in our Savior as our all in all.” Jesus never answers the woman straight, but instead hints that she should just trust in the Lord and she will “never be thirsty again.”  Her quest for acceptance will be fulfilled by Christ and she will be reborn into eternal life.  This transition to complete trust is also apparent in a hymn my grandfather picked out: here we sing about the wonders of our world, God’s world. And once we see Christ “Then we shall bow in humble adoration, and there proclaim, My God, how great Thou art!”   Like the woman, without that trust, we cannot move forward in our relationship with God. We must learn through our development of our faith to recognize the Lord’s call and eventually end up placing our own trust in God.

Like my Granddaddy, each and every one of us must stumble down the path to complete our own search for acceptance and complete trust in God.  In Sunday school, I would sing a song about loving and adoring God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit and “laying my life before” each of them. “Spirit/ we adore you/ lay our lives before you/ how we love you.” The lyrics and hand motions have been committed to memory; however, my six-year-old self never processed the weight of those words.  Today, as an eighteen-year-old, ready to take on the world, I realize that this song is exactly what every one of us, every follower of God, must do.  Each of our journeys to complete our own circle of trust with God is different.  My grandfather found it through music, and the Samaritan woman found it through a simple request for a drink of water from a well.  Each one of us can complete our journey by opening up to God: For some it may be by taking a risk and talking to a new person and for others it could happen once we find our passion in life and through that devotion, developing complete trust in God. “Then we shall bow in humble adoration, and there proclaim, My God, how great Thou art!”  Amen.