334 SE Tecumseh Road  P.O. Box 5  Tecumseh, Kansas 66542  (785) 379-5005  Fax - (785) 379-5061

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Water – Give me Some Water! John 4:5-42  This story is fictional. Any resemblance these characters bear to real people you may know is incidental and accidental. Names are being withheld to protect the innocent and the guilty. It’s summertime, and the temperature is way up there. [Use your imagination, now!] My car breaks down on the west side of Topeka, and I have to walk all the way home, to the east side of Topeka. I have no money and can’t afford to buy anything to make the walk comfortable. After literally hours of walking, I finally arrive on the east side of the city. I plop down on 6th street, close to the area where the Salvation Army is located. This woman I’ve never seen before comes along. She’s not dressed well, she’s got a couple of noisy and annoying kids tagging along. She sees me, comes over, and offers me a drink of water from a bottle she’s carrying. Well, I hesitate. I mean, after all, she’s not like me - you know what I mean? She’s dark skinned, probably Mexican or something. (Her English is not too ‘wippy’, if you get my drift.) If that’s not bad enough, she starts telling me about her troubles. She lives with a guy in some rundown rental place on Lawrence Street, he’s been caught dealing drugs, she has three kids by three different men, etc, etc. The more she talks, the more uncomfortable I get. Face it, this woman has nothing going for her, and I have nothing that I can really say to her. Frankly, I just can’t wait to get away from her. Evidently she picks up on that, on how I feel. I mean, I never said anything to her, I was only thinking it. I suppose she read the disapproval in my face, in my body language or something. She muttered something about being sorry she bothered me with her sad story, and then she yelled at the kids to follow after her and crossed 6th Street, heading south on Lime. The last glimpse I got of her was when she turned the corner over at 7th Street, right there by that little church, that East Topeka United Methodist Church. I picked up the bottle of water she had left behind for me, wiped the top of it with my shirt, and took several big swigs of the cool water. Then, I headed on east, towards home. Boy, I sure hope I never run into that woman again.  - Pastor Piet - (I’m just the storyteller – that’s all.) February 24, 2008: 3rd Sunday in Lent  Re-run. This meditation was written in 2005.