The Kindness You Do Today Comes Back Tomorrow

Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard, “Jesus is making and baptizing more disciples than John” — although it was not Jesus himself but his disciples who baptized — he left Judea and started back to Galilee. But he had to go through Samaria. So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.

 

A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.)

 

The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.)

 

Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”

 

The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?”

 

Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”

 

The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”

 

Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come back.”

 

The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband."

 

"What you have said is true!” The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.”

 

Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”

 

The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.”

 

Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.”

 Verses 13-14: Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”

 Verse 26 Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.”

“The kindness you do for somebody today will come back to you tomorrow.” I can still hear my mother’s deep West African accented voice as those words came through her mouth with one target: to demolish my selfish and ignorant ways.

 

As a young child I never liked to share my possessions, and to make matters worse I was an only child for about nine years of my childhood. So whenever I had something, it was mine. There was nothing my mother did not strive to obtain for me; yet I always wanted more. I would never share with anyone who asked, I would not hang with kids that didn’t fit my standards or give the time of day to those who were different from me.

 

As I grew up I began to encounter situations that brought my mother’s words back to me over and over again: “The kindness you do for somebody today will come back to you tomorrow.” I hear them again in these passages.

 

Jesus showed us that it didn’t matter who a person was or how they lived when he talked to the Samaritan woman. She was a sin-stained person longing for a change of life, and Jesus gave exactly what she needed through his kindness. He told her that if she would drink from the fountain of life she would thirst no more. I think we are all in some way like the Samaritan woman, searching in all the wrong places when Jesus has been here all along. We seem to miss the word of God when it’s right in front of us. Now, my brothers and sisters, stop living from day to day wondering how to satisfy your deepest wants and needs. Give the broken pieces to Christ and he will make you whole.

Dear Heavenly Father,

We come to you today thirsting for your living water. We thank you that you made it possible for us to come to you when we are thirsting. Lord, we ask that you help us to find favor in others the same way you continue to find favor in us, regardless of our status, sinful ways, devilish thoughts, or stained past. We ask that you help us to show compassion to everybody we encounter during this earthly journey, just as you showed compassion to the Samaritan woman at the well. Help us, oh Lord, to know that we can be satisfied if we only will trust in your name, and hold strong to your word. In Jesus’ Name, Amen

 

Rhoda Warner is a student at Springfield High School and attends Grace UMC in Springfield.