Seeing

DEVOTION

THE GOSPEL OF JOHN

SEEING

John 4:27-38

27 Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, "What do you want?" or "Why are you talking with her?" 28 Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, 29 "Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?" 30 They came out of the town and made their way toward him. 31 Meanwhile his disciples urged him, "Rabbi, eat something." 32 But he said to them, "I have food to eat that you know nothing about."  33 Then his disciples said to each other, "Could someone have brought him food?" 34 "My food," said Jesus, "is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. 35 Do you not say, 'Four months more and then the harvest'? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. 36 Even now the reaper draws his wages, even now he harvests the crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. 37 Thus the saying 'One sows and another reaps' is true. 38 I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor." 

NIV

Again, we see how unbiased the Lord is compared to us mortal men. His disciples were taken back because they found Jesus talking to a woman of all people. What respectable male Jew would carry on a conversation with a woman? Women were so beneath their status as men, and then to make matters worse she was a Samaritan and these are the disciples of Jesus. They already know he is someone sent from God. We cannot be certain they are fully aware that he is the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of God who came to redeem all of mankind. Their vision might still be a little short-sighted at this point, having not experienced a total revelation yet. However, they brought the food they had gone into town to buy and expected Jesus to be hungry and want to dig in, so to speak. But instead as they urged him to eat something, he responded that he had food they knew nothing about. Again, we can see the human sight with which his disciples were seeing. It is always difficult to see with spiritual eyes rather than to simply believe what can be seen physically. That is what their response was motivated by, their physical eyes, seeing only the physical world. But Jesus explained to them, took them into his confidence and revealed the truth to them. What nourishes the soul, the true food of life is doing the will of God, finishing the work he has prepared in advance for us to do. Jesus does speak to them in the form of an allegory using farming to explain evangelism, but more importantly to look past the physical and open their spiritual eyes and see the need before them. To look past their human bias, seeing a Samaritan woman, and see a soul in need of a Savior. In addition to understanding we all have a given task, some of us are called to share the gospel, either verbally or by our life, our deeds, sowing the seed as it were, while others might be the ones called to harvest that seed, to actually pray with them and see them accept Jesus as Lord and Savior. So let us look, not with our eyes, but our heart, so we can see past any bias we might have developed with our eyes. Let us see how Jesus sees.