Well of Living Water: The Story of a Man Who Was God

By Sonia Coldicutt

Nicodemus, a noted Doctor of Jewish Law, meets Jesus and is told some startling words that he cannot understand.He is told, “YOU MUST BE BORN AGAIN” and he has no idea what Jesus means.

A prostitute, drawing water at Jacob’s Well, gives a tired traveller a drink, and he tells her that the water he would give her wo

• Language: English
• Publisher: URLink Print & Media, LLC
• Release date: Jan 31, 2020
• ISBN: 9781647531768

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

The Problem

Cindy and Tess were out Christmas shopping. Normally, Tess was lively and full of fun, but this morning she was quiet and withdrawn.

‘Oh, come on Tess, cheer up!’ urged Cindy. ‘You’re like a wet weekend. What’s the matter?’

Tears started to run down Tess’s face, ruining her mascara, but she didn’t seem to care. She slumped down onto a bench in the town square. Cindy sat down too and put her arm round her friend’s shoulder. She didn’t know what to say, so she just waited as curious shoppers walked by and glanced at them.

‘I’m pregnant,’ sobbed Tess. Cindy’s heart gave a lurch. At fifteen years old this was not the best news in the world. Other girls at school had been pregnant, but Tess wasn’t one for going out with a gang or flaunting a list of boyfriends.

‘I’ve known for two weeks now. Mum sent me off to the doctor’s when I had a sore throat, so I asked Dr White to do a test. It was positive. It happened during that party at Jan’s. I knew I’d had too much to drink. I can’t remember who I was with. Oh, Cindy, I don’t know what to do. I daren’t tell Mum and Dad. They’ll go up the wall. I’m desperate…’

Clive and Pat were coming out of the new designer shop that sold expensive, trendy clothes. They’d each spent far too much money on buying new outfits for Christmas, but why not? Clive had a good job with the Bank and Pat was shooting up the success ladder in the computer software firm she worked for. Money was no object really…Pat felt a stab of annoyance. She was pregnant. Oh, they wanted children – some day – but not now. She hadn’t told Clive. He’d be livid. They were planning to extend the house next year and then there was to be an exotic holiday in the Bahamas which they’d promised themselves. Well, they’d go ahead with both. She’d slip into that private clinic in the New Year and arrange for an abortion. After all, it wasn’t a baby yet, just a tiny collection of cells. She wouldn’t tell Clive. She’d get home after it was over, go to bed and say she didn’t feel very well and they’d sent her home from work. A day or so in bed and she’d be fine…

Betty looked wistfully at the shop windows full of Christmas fare. Then she glanced at Sophie, fast asleep in the battered pushchair. Betty was a ‘single parent’. When she had told Stan she was pregnant he’d walked out on her. Her parents didn’t want to know. She had never once considered an abortion, and decided to go it alone. The local hostel had been great, and now she was housed in a small flat furnished with second-hand items. She smiled at the sleeping baby. It had all been worth it.

John and Cathy were standing outside the local babycare store. It was always difficult for Cathy to go in to shops that sold children’s clothes. For fifteen years she had hoped that one day she’d be buying things for their own child, but now she’d give up hope. It didn’t help that her sister had just had her fourth baby and they had to find something to show how happy they were for her.

‘Come on, Love,’ said John with a forced smile. ‘Let’s get it over with. What’s it to be this time? Babygowns – or something for when he’s a bit older?’

Problems, problems, problems, and so many of them are about babies – being pregnant when you shouldn’t be, not being pregnant when you long to be, wondering how you are going to manage with yet another baby…My thoughts are drawn back to a small town in Palestine where, around 2,000 years ago, in Nazareth, one of these problems was being experienced by two people. The first was a young girl around fourteen years of age called Mary. The other was a man quite a bit older than her. His name was Joseph. He was a carpenter, and all his working life had been spent learning to use the tools of his trade until he was skillful and had a fine reputation fashioning wood for many uses. Recently he had been seeing Mary quite a lot. She was the daughter of his neighbours and now they were betrothed.

If you said, ‘Oh, you mean they were engaged,’ the answer would be NO. The Jews regarded marriage as a sacred rite never to be entered into lightly. Sadly today many young people rush into marriage too soon and rush out of it without giving it time to mature. A Jewish betrothal was not like a modern engagement which can be broken off without any legal problems. A betrothal was binding, and only the death of one of the partners or legal divorce could break it, so though they didn’t live together as man and wife until after the wedding, they were legally bound together.

Joseph had a real problem, and so worried about it was he that he was unable to sleep. His mind kept returning to the events of the day. That very morning Mary, his betrothed wife, had come to his workshop. His heart had given a lurch as he’d looked at her. She was so young, so vulnerable, so – pure; yes, that was the right word for her. She had about her an innocence and purity that had drawn him to her from the very beginning of their courtship. Today, however, she was in great distress. Joseph had carefully put down his hammer and chisel and looked across his work bench at her.

‘Mary, my dear, what ever is the matter? You look so pale. Are you ill?’

The reply she’d given him had made him speechless for a while.

‘No, Joseph, I’m not ill.’ She paused and then took a deep breath. ‘I’m…I’m pregnant.’

He had looked at her in disbelief. Certainly he wasn’t the father, and he couldn’t believe she would willingly give herself to another man. Had one of the village lads assaulted her? He drew her gently to a rough-hewn bench he was halfway through planing, swept the shavings off it and sat down with her.

‘Tell me,’ he’d pleaded, ‘Who was it?’

She’d turned towards him, her eyes filling with tears. ‘Joseph, it’s not like that. I haven’t been with anyone else. Oh, how can I explain it to you?’ and she’d begun to sob.

He’d put his arm round her shoulders. ‘Just try and tell me. Take your time. I’ll believe you,’ he’d promised.

She’d leant against him and begun to relax. After a minute or two she’d stopped crying. ‘It was just over a month ago,’ she’d begun. ‘I’d been helping Mother with the baking. She told me to go and change my gown because it was all covered with flour. I went to the chest to get a fresh one. It’s quite dark in that corner. I pulled out the gown and as I closed the lid there was this light all around me. I was so scared. I called to Mother but she must have gone outside. Then, in the middle of the light, I saw this man. I just knew that he was…an angel.’ She stopped and looked at Joseph. ‘There, I knew you wouldn’t believe me!’ she cried, and started weeping again.

Joseph sighed. ‘Look, Mary, I’m listening to what you’re saying. When you’ve told me everything I’ll have to think about it, won’t I? Now go on.’

‘Well, I was really scared,’ continued Mary. ‘I started to tremble. The angel must have noticed this, because he said, in a soft, lovely voice, Well done, Mary. You have found favour with God! I just looked at him in confusion, so he said, Don’t be frightened, Mary! God is going to bless you more than any other woman. Very soon now you will become pregnant and give birth to a baby boy, and you are to name him JESUS. He will be very great and shall be called the Son of God.

‘I felt very troubled and upset. I said to him, But how can I have a baby? I’m not married yet. I just couldn’t think of anything else to say. Then this light round the angel seemed to grow even brighter. I fell to the ground and closed my eyes, but I could still hear him. I’ll always remember his next words. He said, The Holy Spirit shall come upon you, and the power of God shall overshadow you – so the baby born to you shall be absolutely holy – the Son of God!

‘Then, as if to show me how wonderful and powerful God is, he told me something amazing about my old Aunt Elizabeth. You remember her, don’t you? She’s married to Uncle Zacharias – he’s a priest. They live in the hill country near Jerusalem. I’ve always felt sorry for her because she’s never been able to have any children. Well, the angel told me that she’s six months pregnant! Can you believe that, Joseph?’

‘I really don’t know what to believe,’ sighed Joseph. ‘Is that all?’

‘No,’ said Mary. ‘I was covering my face with my hands. I peeped through my fingers to see if the angel was still there, and he was. He seemed to be waiting for me to say something. Then it suddenly came into my mind that I WAS chosen and I was VERY SPECIAL. There are lots of girls God could have chosen, but He’d chosen ME! I felt Him very close to me. I just said, I am the Lord’s servant and I am willing for this to happen to me if it’s what God wants. May all that you have said to me come true. Then I had this lovely feeling as though God was putting His arms around me. I looked up and the angel had gone. Well, it must be what God wants, because I haven’t had a period since and I’m certain that I’m pregnant! You do still love me, don’t you, Joseph? I don’t know what I’ll do if you say you don’t want me any more.’

He had comforted her and reassured her and walked with her back to her parents’ home, but in his mind he had been in a turmoil. For the rest of the day he had been able to do no work. When it grew dark he’d flung himself onto his mattress, hoping that sleep would blot out the memories for a while, but sleep wouldn’t come and he lay tossing and turning, torn with doubts.

He’d seen men in this situation before – particularly older men betrothed to younger women. He groaned aloud as he remembered how the poor young creatures had been dragged before the village elders who had first deliberated and then pronounced them guilty. The punishment for adultery was death by stoning. He shuddered at the thought of his lovely Mary undergoing such a terrible fate – yet what was he to do? He was a law-abiding man. Could he believe her? Perhaps it would be better if she went to stay with her Aunt Elizabeth permanently. At least she could help the old woman through her labour and birth, if indeed she was pregnant, and in due time Elizabeth could help Mary bring forth this child she was carrying. Yes, this would be the kindest way out. He really couldn’t marry her now.

It was as if coming to a decision caused a great light to shine round him. In amazement and fear he saw someone standing by him. An angel? THE angel? Was he awake or dreaming? He heard a voice, soft and beautiful, just the way Mary had described it.

‘Joseph, son of David,’ it said gently, ‘don’t hesitate or be afraid to take Mary as your wife. Yes, she IS pregnant, but the Child within her has been conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit. When the Child is born you are to call him JESUS’ – there’s that name again, thought Joseph – ‘which as you know means SAVIOUR, because He will save His people from their sins. Soon the words Isaiah the prophet wrote long ago will come true: LISTEN! A VIRGIN SHALL CONCEIVE AND BEAR A SON, AND HE SHALL BE CALLED EMMANUEL, GOD WITH US.’

The light faded, and in the darkness Joseph felt such a peace settle over him. All his anxieties over what he should do had been removed. He felt a sense of awe and reverence deep within him. He was ashamed that he had ever doubted Mary.

‘Lord God,’ he whispers, ‘how can a man be more blessed than I am? Help me to be a good husband to her – and help me to care properly for this precious Child You have entrusted to her and to me.’

I found it very humbling to read this story in the gospels of Matthew and Luke. I have to ask myself, what would my response have been to the visitation of the angel – whom we are told was the archangel Gabriel himself, a heavenly being who was always close to God. Then the thought came to me that God wants ALL of us to be obedient to Him, but until we believe that story and accept that He REALLY DID send His Son into the world to ‘save His people from their sins’ we’ll never be blessed with the presence of Jesus in our lives. I don’t know about you, but I find it hard to be obedient. I found these words in 1 John 2:23-25 this morning as I was doing my daily Bible reading, and they are such important words that I’m closing this first chapter with them. You may not understand them at this time, but I hope that, as you progress from page to page, their meaning will become clearer:

Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father either. He who acknowledges the Son has the Father also…If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, you also will abide in the Son and in the Father – and this is the promise that He has promised us – ETERNAL LIFE.

Reading and Discussion Points

Can I say at the outset that when quoting from the Bible I have used the Living Bible version because it is very modern and understandable, even if it is considered by purists to lose something because it is a paraphrase. When I suggest you read the story in your own Bible it doesn’t matter which version you use. Also, I have written these notes at the end of each chapter so that you may like to gather together in groups and get more deeply into the life of Jesus. Otherwise just use them for your own meditation.

Can you identify with or recognize amongst your own acquaintances any of the people at the beginning of the chapter: the schoolgirl Tess, devastated to find she is pregnant; Pat, the successful young wife who doesn’t want a family yet and is going to choose to have an abortion; Betty, the single mum, determined to bring up her child alone if it has to be; Cathy, the childless wife, buying something for her sister’s fourth child yet living with a broken heart?

Read about the Visitation in Luke 1:18-25 and Joseph’s dream in Mathew 1:18-25.

Now read Isaiah’s prophecy in Isaiah 53.

Now you can see how the birth and life of Jesus was foretold more than 400 years before it took place. What thoughts came to you as you read the passage from Isaiah?

CHAPTER 2

The Prophet of the Highest

‘Choose a career and get some qualifications. You never know when they’ll come in useful.’

That was my Mother’s advice to us three children. She spoke from experience. Though she’d done a year’s student teaching she’d never gone on to training college, preferring cash when she needed it to the chance of qualifying as a teacher. With three children to educate, a husband who suffered three years of ill health during the Second World War and all the problems of wartime Britain she would have loved to have worked again; but we lived out in the country and there was no chance of her finding work that really satisfied her.

I took her advice. I was lucky to be able to do a year’s student teaching. Then I went away to teacher training college for two years, returned to the village school which had nurtured my first faltering steps into the profession and spent six very happy and fulfilling years, during which time I married.

My generation of young women hoped that eventually we would marry. Along with marriage was the expectation that we would have children. This probably meant saying goodbye to a lifelong career in any job because even then – and it’s not exactly in the Dark Ages – our husbands were after all the BREADWINNERS! Womens’ Lib had not yet arrived! My teaching was brought to a rather abrupt close because I had a serious miscarriage, became pregnant again quite quickly, and was fearful lest I’d lose this next precious baby if I continued in this very stressful profession.

God has been good to us. We have four children, now grown up, and I spent twelve years being a very busy, very fulfilled mother. Much to my surprise I was drawn back into teaching in the late 1960s when posters were begging women teachers to return. It was only part- time, but gradually I found I could put in more hours until I became a full-time class teacher. For six years I taught all day and ran a music centre in the school on two evenings. This resulted in concerts, music workshops, time away from home to attend courses and summer schools, and teaching took over my life. It was a blessing in disguise when, through a falling school roll, I was offered and accepted early retirement, though it took two years before my days stopped being geared to a phantom school timetable.

The blessings revealed themselves in 1986. After years of running my life on MY terms I gave it to Jesus and asked Him if He would make a better job of it than I had done. He did! He has shown me such a lot, and I have had to bring all that time of frantic living to the Cross. It had been wonderful for my ego, but it had made me an uncaring wife and a mother who was always too busy. As I read the Word I could see that God intended marriage to be a partnership, not a battleground.

The longer I live, the clearer it seems to me that motherhood often comes to women at the wrong time of their lives. For too many it comes in the teenage years, and so often results in single-parent status, accompanied by stress and loneliness. For many women who have good jobs the lure of a high salary traps them into believing that they can never afford to have children, or perhaps they wait till their late thirties or early forties before finally becoming mothers. Up till this century we had very little choice. Either God sent us children, often more than we could cope with, or He didn’t. Childlessness was anguishing for a woman, because so often her husband branded her as a failure. In the Bible ‘barrenness’ was a terrible thing. Take Elizabeth, for instance.

Elizabeth was the Virgin Mary’s aunt. She and Zacharias her husband could both trace their families back to King David, and beyond him to Aaron, the brother of Moses, who became the first High Priest even as the Children of Israel were moving around in the Wilderness. With such righteous descendants you would have thought that God would specially bless them with children, but, says Luke in the first chapter of his gospel, ‘she was barren’.

Luke was a Greek doctor, so as far as the Jews were concerned he was a Gentile. This did not prevent him from becoming one of the apostle Paul’s closest friends who travelled with him on many of his long missionary journeys. I believe that he also became a good friend of Mary, our Lord’s mother. In no other gospel are the accounts of the miraculous births of John the Baptist and Jesus Christ recorded in such detail. What a debt we owe to Theophilus, for whom Luke wrote his gospel (probably a very long letter) and what he described as ‘The Acts of the Apostles’. God the Holy Spirit must have been the inspiration behind these historic documents and He made sure that, as they were passed round amongst the early Christians, they were not destroyed. They must have been faithfully copied many times, and now, 2,000 years later, we can read them too. Let us look at his opening chapter.

Zacharias was a priest in the Abijah division. By this time there were so many priests in Judea that each division was only required to work in the temple for one week twice a year. In the intervening months there was much to study as the books of the Mosaic Law and the writings of the prophets were scrutinized, because each generation hoped they would be alive when the Messiah appeared. This particular week, when the lot was drawn to see which priest would have the honour of going into the Inner Sanctuary to burn incense before the Lord, the name of Zacharias was pulled out. For Zacharias this day marked the pinnacle of his career; many priests never had this honour and for those who did it was the one and only time they would enter this sacred place.

There was always a great crowd of worshippers at any temple service, and the high point came when the appointed priest entered the Inner Sanctuary. While the priest was hidden from view the people prayed. If you are familiar with the service of Holy Communion you could compare it with that moment when the priest sanctifies the bread and the wine. The high point of the temple service arrived. Zacharias parted the heavy curtains that separated the Inner Sanctum from the people and went inside. The sacred area was empty except for a stone altar on which was a golden vessel for the burning of the incense. He placed the grains of prepared incense in the vessel and was about to light them with a taper when, to his fear and amazement, he saw an angel standing to the right of the altar. (Note the detail in Luke’s account.) The poor old priest was quite overcome. He was sure he wasn’t dreaming and he began to tremble.

The angel spoke to him. He assured him that as, over many years, both he and his wife had pleaded with God for the precious gift of a son, those prayers had been heard. Now was the time for the gift to be given They WOULD have a son, and he would become one of God’s great men – so much so that he would be filled with the Holy Spirit while still in his mother’s womb. To him would be given the task of preparing God’s people for the coming of the Messiah.

Excited though he was by these promises, Zacharias was a realist. Too many childless years had sapped any hope he may once have had. He couldn’t stay silent.

‘Look here!’ he blurted out, ‘I’m an old