I’ll never forget a lesson my daughter taught me over 20 years ago with a simple word that reframed how I think. She was playing with her cousin, both toddlers, and as toddlers do, one wanted one toy, and the other wanted it too. As frustrations mounted, my nephew came to me crying and said, “She hit me.” The conversation that followed went as you would expect. “Are you okay?” “Yes.” “Okay, let’s go talk to her.” I immediately asked her, “What happened?” and her simple statement stopped me in my tracks. She said, “I chose to hit him.” It wasn’t passive or blaming what he did; it was an honest response to the choice she made. Without knowing it, she owned it; she recognized the frustrating situation wasn’t the issue—her response was. 

That was a life lesson right there, spoken by a 2-year-old. Our circumstances, whether placed on us or chosen by us, are not the issue; our response to them is. We see this in the Bible in the life of the woman at the well. Jesus met this woman, a rejected outcast in the community. He came into her world, saw her, called to her, and offered a way out. She had been so burned by men, having been married 5 different times, and even now she was living with a man. What we know about this culture is that women didn’t have much of a voice, if any. They definitely couldn’t seek a divorce; only men could do that, and they didn’t need much of a reason to do it. Even one of the laws gives a reason of  burning the bread. Women came to the well in the early morning and evening to draw water, and the fact that this woman was here at noon, in the heat of the day, shows the depth of the isolation and rejection in the world she lived in. We don’t really need to know whether any of her situation was her fault. What is important is her response when she met Jesus—what would she choose? To lay blame, to seek to avenge her abuser, or would she boldly choose to listen and respond to the calling that Jesus was placing before her? By telling her “everything she had ever done,” he was taking all the shame off the table; none of that was the point. He was. He wanted her to choose him. He offered her living water, and she chose it. He told her who He was, and she believed it. He commissioned her out, and she went. She came for water, but Jesus came for her heart.

Her life had purpose, and she was not defined by her past, her choices, or what others thought. Jesus made it clear that day to her, to you, and to me. So the question is this: “Who will you choose?”

Scripture

John 4:13–14 (NIV)

Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”