The Woman at the Well

By Gary B. Swanson

         The door swung open, clattering against the wall, and the woman hurried in.

         A man rolled over on the bed, scowling in the sudden sunlight. "Where is your jar?" he asked. "I thought you'd gone for water."

         The woman's face glowed with the heat of the waning afternoon or was it something else? He couldn't tell.

         "I have no further need for water," she said breathlessly.

         He rolled his eyes. "You and your riddles!"

         She laughed. "I've seen the Messiah."

         The man looked at her more closely. "Have you indeed? You went out for water and you found the Messiah."

         "He is at Jacob's well."

         "Just sitting there passing the afternoon, is He?"

         The woman turned abruptly serious. "Don't mock me! I know what I've seen."

         "Why are you so sure that He is the Messiah?"

         "He knows my whole life. He knows of my marriages. He knows of you and me . . ."

         "Everyone in Sychar knows of you and me; there's nothing remarkable in that."

         "But no one else has known the desperation we've admitted only to each other the times we've clung together, weeping in the darkness."

         The man turned away. "You swore you would never tell anyone of that."

         She sat down next to him reached out and touched his shoulder. "I didn't tell Him; He told me. It seems He knows us better than we do ourselves. He knows what we want what we really want."

         "What do we really want?"

         "You will know that when you see Him."

         "I am not a religious man . . ."

         She took his hand and led him toward the door. "That is just the part that is most thrilling neither is He."

Insight, January 24, 1984