I’ve been reading about different personality types in a book called Discovering the Enneagram by Richard Rohr and Andreas Ebert (Crossroad/Herder & Herder). It’s the first stab at defining personalities that has ever made any sense to me.
The category I fall into mentions living out of a deep sense of loss and shame. Shame. This word reverberates inside me every time I hear it. It’s a part of me. It was at some point kneaded into the makeup of my being, and there it has remained.
I have been thinking about the woman at the well lately. About the way that Jesus chose that place to essentially (metamorphically) propose, and how that woman was to be His bride. He ripped through eternity and the heavens and through a womb, and He didn’t stop until He sat there on the side of that well. He ripped into the heart of a nobody, a woman broken and despised, shameful, and said, “I choose you.” She came with her bucket to fill it and left it there with Him. I can imagine it lying on its side next to Jesus’ feet, dropped and forgotten in the ecstasy of being known by God.
The moment of panic will come and go when my value is assigned by the world standards. There will be times when I feel alone and defenseless against its judgment. But this is what is real: Jesus told the woman at the well that the time has come when the true worshipers will worship in spirit and in truth.
Essentially, He was saying: “I am it. The spirit world is more real than the ground you stand on. Let my voice be the well from which you draw, and the voice to which all other voices are compared.”
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Prayer:
Jesus, thank You for taking away my shame in choosing me. Each day, reminded me that I have value in You. May your voice be the clearest in my head.