I think I’ve finally earned my criminology merit badge now. Maybe even an associate’s degree. And I did it all sitting there on my couch, watching T.V. shows that plumb the murky depths of the criminal mind. From “NCIS” to old “Perry Mason” reruns, crime shows seem to feed my obsessive compulsion to figure out why people do what they do.
My husband likes to know how things work; I like to know how people work.
Joe recently gutted our refrigerator and our computer printer because both had gone on the fritz. He opened them up, diagnosed them, fixed them, and put them back together again.
I sometimes wonder if he and I are of the same species. I don’t even know how to put oil in my car.
It’s torture for me to think about having to figure out what’s wrong with stuff, but people fascinate me. I love to hear their life stories, to learn what has shaped and etched their souls.
Several years ago, I spent a weekend in the mountains with a friend from Alabama and her Bible study group. I was sitting in the cabin early one morning having coffee with a woman I’d never met, and as the sun came up, her story came out.
She shared how just a few years before, she and her family were vacationing at a lake and one evening, a drunken boater crashed into the pier and killed both of her young sons and husband. Just like that, her world was shattered.
Looking into the eyes of this woman, I was overwhelmed with the realization that I was face-to-face with someone who had lived through my worst nightmare. The thing I feared the very most in this world had happened to her, to this very together-looking woman with whom I was now having coffee.
How does anyone survive that kind of loss and grief? I wanted to know. I asked many questions, and her answer to them all was essentially the same: “It was the grace of God that got me through it, drawn one breath at a time.”
We are surrounded by people like this woman all the time. People who have incredible, churning stories just below the placid surface of their lives. We stand behind them in the checkout line; they teach our kids at school, service our car, or take our blood pressure at the doctor’s office. Everybody has a story, and if we take time to listen, we will probably understand more clearly why they are the way they are.
Our stories don’t excuse us, but they do sometimes help explain us.
In the Gospel of John, we read how Jesus met a broken soul at a well in Samaria– a woman who had been married to a passel of men and was shacking up with another. Defying the social rules of His day, Jesus took time to listen to this woman and to see beyond her salty exterior to her wounded, weary heart.
And there at the well, He offered her “living water” – His truth, His hope, His righteousness.
Remember the old Bee Gees song that asks: “How can you mend a broken heart?”
I’m finally learning the answer: “I can’t, but Jesus can.”
Some folks (others, not me) can fix refrigerators and computer printers, but only Jesus can fix a heart.
But if I take time to see, really listen, try to understand, and gently point to Him–to the compassionate Savior standing at the well–some may find the living, healing water He offers.
We are surrounded by thirsty, thirsty people.
“…the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.” – Jesus Christ (John 4:14b)