Opening
Lord, as I sit here with you, quiet my heart and mind. You invite me to come as I am and so I come. Open my heart to all you have for me. Awaken me to your voice within.
Reflection
As we continue our journey through Lent
we slow our pace so we can listen well
to what God desires to say to us.
God’s love seeks to heal the broken places within us,
To free us from the things that bind us
To bring light into our shadow places.
God desires us to know life in a fuller way,
And to live from a place of belovedness and belonging.
Invitation
Read the Scripture through slowly a couple of times. Pause where you are drawn.
John 4:5-14 (To read the whole story continue through verse 42)
So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.
7 A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” 8 (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) 9 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.) 10 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.” 11 The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12 Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” 13 Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 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.”
Prayer Response
Gracious Lord,
I am struck by the way
you meet us where we are,
in our place of need.
How much you notice us
and see what is beyond our awareness.
There is compassion in your seeing
and the desire to deliver us
from the places where we are stuck.
With your help,
enable us to let go of the things that bind us
And that hold us back.
You have so much for us.
Open our eyes, our hearts, our minds
to receive the life we have in you.
Amen.