“Tod is sad,” Sammy said. “He doesn’t see his daddy much. He says his step-dad is mean, and that no one loves him. Is that true, Grandpa?”

“It is sad that Tod’s family is broken up,” Grandpa said. “But Jesus loves him and wants to help him. Let me tell you a story….”

The Man at the Well

(Reference: John 4:5-29.)

There once lived a woman in a village called Sychar. There was a well outside the village and as a little girl she went with the other girls to get water from it. She had heard the story of how Jacob had dug the well and lived with his family there. Like all the other girls, she dreamed of having her own family and someone to love her someday. But when she grew up and got married, she wasn’t happy. Her home wasn’t loving like she had thought it would be. There were quarrels and fights, and soon her home was broken up.

Months went by. Not many smiles came her way, and the woman was lonely. “If I only had someone to love me,” she thought. Another man married her, but she soon got tired of him. “He is selfish. He doesn’t really love me,” she said. So she complained and grumbled about everything he did until he left her. And that is how life went for her.

Now the woman walked alone to the well. The other women wouldn’t talk to her. “She has lived a bad life,” they said. “Five men have married her and she was never happy.” The woman tried not to listen, but it was true. Now she lived with a man who beat her when he was mad. “No one has ever loved me,” she thought. But she was wrong.

This day when she came to the well, a strange man was sitting on the edge. “May I have a drink?” he asked. The woman stopped and frowned. “Why do you ask me?” she said. He was a Jew, and Jews never came to Sychar. They thought they were better than everyone else, and so no one liked them. But this man was different.

“If you knew what God wants to give you, you would ask me for living water,” he said. “It is water that will fill your life with happiness and never run out.” The woman remembered all the times she had tried to be happy. But all she had was a sad, sad life. Who could make her happy now?

The man seemed to know all about her life. And most of all, he told her that God wanted her to love Him and obey Him. He could change her life and make her, even her messed-up life, happy. Leaving her water pot, the woman ran back to the village. She forgot all the frowns and loneliness in her excitement. She must tell the others of the man at the well!

“Was it Jesus?” asked Sammy when the story was over. “I think I ’member it.”

“Yes,” said Grandpa with a smile. “Jesus was the man at the well. And He still wants to give living water to everyone who is thirsty.”

“What is ‘living water’?” asked Edward, who had come in to listen.

“The kind that is alive!” said Sammy.

Grandpa chuckled. “That kind that gives you life,” he said. “Jesus will give us His life inside. He can take away all the loneliness and sadness, and brings His love that never runs out. But you have to be thirsty for it.”

Edward thought about that. “You mean, you have to want it a lot?”

“You have to want it enough to ask for it, and give up all your own ways to get it. Too many people are drinking in the mud puddles instead of dipping deep in God’s well.”

“Mud puddles? Yuk!” exclaimed Sammy. “I want good water to drink!”

“Me, too,” said Edward.