“A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” ⁸ (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.)⁹ The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings 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 nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? ¹² Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.” ¹³ Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, ¹⁴ but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” ¹⁵ The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”  John 4:7-15

In the second chapter of John, we encountered the wedding at Cana – where Jesus turned the water into wine. In this story, Jesus reveals his glory and reveals the ushering in of a new age. Now, Jesus is offering living water to the woman at the well. Though Jesus has no bucket to offer that she might get some of that water, he is actually the water that will bring her refreshment—because a relationship with Jesus Christ can give the individual relief for their thirst for life eternal. What we need to remind ourselves is that Jesus’ bucket has no limit. The love, mercy and grace found in Jesus Christ is limitless and available to all because he drank from the cup of suffering for us.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote these words, “Jesus prays To his Father that the cup may pass from him, and his Father hears his prayer; for the cup of suffering will indeed pass from him – but only by his drinking it. That is the assurance he receives as he kneels for the second time in the garden of Gethsemane that suffering will indeed pass as he accepts it. That is the only path to victory. The cross is his triumph over suffering.”

Does this remove all suffering for us in this life? Of course not. But, it brings us some consolation that when we suffer, it is not in vain. Our suffering, especially if it is for Jesus, or when we trust in Jesus through that suffering, then we find comfort knowing that Jesus suffers with us.

Pastor Dave