Today's Card: A Woman's Wisdom on Your Behalf

From the story of the Woman at the Well

Something a bit different today . . . because of the card I’ve pulled: the Woman at the Well.

She’s one of the ten stories I reimagine and retell in my book, Rewriting Eve, and so I thought I’d offer an excerpt from such; some of my thoughts inspired by this woman, her story, her example, her wisdom.

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If you’re not familiar with her story, you can read it here. Not surprisingly, I have a LOT to say about how it’s been told. Here is at least a portion of such:

From Rewriting Eve:

“When I began working with the story of the Woman at the Well, I was still married to the pastor. I sat dutifully in the front row every Sunday morning with my adorable daughters. They were often in matching outfits, their little feet adorned with patent-leather shoes that dangled over the edge of the pew—the same feet that would run enthusiastically to Children’s Church the second they were released from the formality of the “adult” service. When the hour drew to an end, I would take my husband’s arm, walk down the aisle with him, and greet each person as they left—shaking hands, giving hugs, asking them how their week had been. Once back home, two pairs of patent-leather shoes now strewn across the floor, I thought about how hollow so much of it seemed. And when I was honest, I could admit that I didn’t feel much different. None of this seemed right to me. Shouldn’t the church be the very place in which we felt most alive, most engaged, most seen? Why was it just the opposite?

“But something started, ever-so-slowly, to shift when I began to read and write between the lines of this woman’s story. I listed out all the things I’d been told about her in one column, in the other, all that I discovered when I thought for myself. I inventoried all the ways I’d come to understand God with a capital G, even Jesus, compared to the way in which this man-and-Messiah showed up. I looked carefully at why her story had been told the way it had and began accounting for everything that would be different in my life and others’ if it had been told from her perspective instead of with such a blatant agenda. And along the way, I did feel alive, engaged, and seen.