Week 2 February 2025, Devotion Part 2

And he whom you now have is not your husband…  John 4:18

The members of the “dys-fun-ctional” family flesh out every nuance derived from the prefix dys, meaning bad, ill, abnormal, impaired, and difficult. When multiplied in our modern free-for-all society launched in the sixties, the fun that follows dys might have taken the form of liberated Bunnies frolicking in the Hugh-Hefner-hutch grandly named Playboy Mansion. There the debauched publisher sparked the sexual revolution for which we are still paying the price. He famously wore pajamas around the clock as a reputed workaholic, pushing his utopian visions of liberty free of outdated religious constraints. Hefner died in 2017 at age 91, and even if he wore his “gunfire black” custom-silk attire in his cushy casket, he lit up the grinning face of his host at hell’s gate.

Hefner loungewear is still widely sold and so are the notions of sex as casual as a handshake, with convenient remedies for unexpected consequences. The name of Jesus, the only begotten Son of the Father, does still exceed in fame that of the iconic Playboy, but only if we stick Him with His “meek and mild” persona. As such, He would even get invited to a gala Hollywood fundraiser for underpaid sex workers and overpaid sex offenders in high political office. Of course, being the Christ of millennia of recorded sacred history, He would have so send His regrets. Why is that, we ask.  Part 2 of 2 

Comment:  Jesus is booked solid going from well to well – Jacob’s, Martin Luther’s, the one deep in a Utah desert where the five secret wives of one husband go to speak reverently of Joseph Smith. He prophesied that Christ’s original Church couldn’t survive, which is why the Angel Moroni tapped him to correct that.  So in 1830 he organized The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  Smith was killed in 1844 by an angry mob, but Mormonism is still attracting new members in many countries of the world.  To some it is a religion big on family values, while others decry it as a cult.  If we put the woman from Samaria in the mix, she would tell the stranger asking for a drink that some say the Messiah will return to Independence, MO, not to Jerusalem, as formerly believed.  She reads the Book of Mormon, while many who call themselves Christians don’t read the Bible.  That’s why Jesus initiates those “well” encounters and wants to draw us into the John 4 narrative. It is much more detailed than that of Nicodemus, who did become born again as implied by the end of his story.  Our “woman at the well” rushes back into her town of Sychar and breathlessly exclaims, “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did!”  Rather than coming across as terminally dysfunctional, she sounds radically delivered.  She joins the ranks of lay evangelists who draw people to the Savior of the world  to have their lives changed.  Never mind the startled disciples who had gone into town to get food, only to find out they were all invited to enjoy the citizens’ extended hospitality in their homes.  In my many years of journeying with my Lord, I have taken all kinds of courses on how to become an effective witness. Methods learned and notes kept have long been deleted from my memory.  Jesus told Nicodemus that the wind blows where it will. If WE become the Holy Spirit’s story, watch out, world!  John 4