Most relationships are ones of convenience. Someone lives near us, works with us, or our lives intersect in some way that requires little effort. These are the people we can live with.
On a rare occasion, we meet someone that we value so greatly that we go to great lengths to build a relationship with them. These are the people we cannot live without.
Jesus Christ is God. God came to the earth, and He walked through a hot desert to a well in Samaria to sit with a sinful woman. The account that John 4 records is likely the highlights of a lengthy conversation that Jesus had with the woman, but from it we see Jesus’ amazing overcoming of multiple inhibitors of true worship.
First, Jesus overcame the racial barrier between Jew and Samaritan to show that salvation came through the Jews and was intended for all nations of the earth. Additionally, Jesus overcame the sin barrier and confronted the habitual sexual sin of the woman as a reason she had been unable to truly worship and came to her as God. Third, Jesus overcame the gender barrier and showed God’s gracious heart of loving compassion for this woman and all women. Last, Jesus overcame the geographical barrier and opened the possibility that everyone everywhere could worship because the Father had sought them and given them the truth and the Spirit.
And in His greatest act of love for this woman, Jesus later hung on a Roman cross, punished between two thieves, dying for the sins of this woman so that she could be made clean and new in God’s sight. Jesus then rose from the dead and ascended into heaven so that the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth (John 14:17), could come to her and turn her body into a temple wherein God would live and she would worship in spirit and truth. It just goes to show you that the best love stories are not where a guy and a girl end up in bed together in sin, but where Jesus saves somebody and spends forever blessing them as they are worshiping Him.
How is your worship life? How can it be improved?