And he whom you now have is not your husband… John 4:18
The much-married woman of Samaria has stolen away from town at high noon to draw urgently needed water from Jacob’s well. Being drawn into a confusing conversation with the Jewish stranger must strike her as bizarre. The scene would be less surreal if her five former mothers-in-law suddenly materialized to ambush her with a barrage of scorching invectives fit for a serial home-wrecker. But what if their flared tempers and inflamed tongues were to fail them at the sight of one so palpably miserable? Though she is still a “looker,” her features are etched by disillusionment. Can this be the cunning vixen who preys on infatuated sons to infuriate their mothers and make yet another family the laughingstock of their respectable town?
Welcome to the bizarre world of the dysfunctional family! Its members trash our values and trample on our hearts. We want to thrash them with our untamed tongue, yet we try to treasure them with our unconditional love. Against all odds we commit to fortify the fraying bonds of affection and respect. When that hope fades, we may begin to loathe the black family sheep, and feel entitled to feel sorry for ourselves. Worse still, worn down by it all, we might briefly wish they were dead. Run this by King David and notice how this does not shock him. He processed it all by writing Psalms of Lament and even dropping a name here and there. We do well by just reading Eph. 2:1-2, “ And you he made alive, when you were dead through the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience.” Part 1 of 2
Comment: With any kind of preachy wind knocked out of us, we now simply wear a T-shirt to family functions that says “John 3:16” on it. If anyone asks, we sweetly and in few words tell how Jesus has changed our lives for the better. Brace for all-out war if you wear the one that flaunts “John 3:36.” No one ever quotes this verse in conjunction with the Nicodemus story. “He who believes in the Son has eternal life; he who does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God rests upon him.” All translations of it imply that rejection of Christ is a deliberate action. In the original Greek it means “rejecting belief; refusing obedience,” or “refusing to be convinced.” Belief – faith – is contrasted with disobedience. This clearly rings the bell of Genesis 3 where a sly voice wearing snake skin asked, “Oh yea, hath God really said that?” This launched the prototype of the dysfunctional family complete with actual murder. So, the perfect one has yet to be invented! We should question why the Samaritan woman’s story follows hard on the heels of the highly moral Nicodemus’ encounter with Jesus. Samaria was far more than the black sheep in God’s Covenant family of Israel. The inhabitants were despised as an inhospitable half-breed; Luke 9:52-56 tells how John and James offered to call down fire from heaven to consume them. Shockingly, Jesus sought precisely this wreck of a woman to become a worshiper of His heavenly Father. She had no idea what “in spirit and in truth” meant, but the Holy Spirit foresaw the thrilling end of her story and detailed it for the Bible student. Doesn’t that spark HOPE for our families?
My family was dysfunctional long before our current hateful political climate took root. I have seen how it has torn families apart, and I wonder what God is thinking? The love and goodness of Jesus is not being promoted. Instead we must deal with wave after wave of hate and lies aimed 24/7 at us. Most of us have had to make painful adjustments in our already fractured families, adding to the disfunction of the family unit. Staying faithful and being a follower of our Savior, has probably never been so difficult as it is these days. For me, I hang unto my faith in the Holy Son of God. Cindi