Had no idea

Of the things we don’t know, some we don’t even know that we don’t know. Once I heard a lecture on space travel. The speaker was talking about a model for distant travel, for which the fuel source would be plasma. NASA mission planners are looking into using plasma rocket transport vehicles. A plasma-based propulsion system uses far less fuel than chemically fueled rockets. Solid materials would not handle the high temperature of plasma, so magnet fields are used to accelerate the electrically charged ions and electrons to provide thrust. Hearing this, my thought was, “What?” Who knew that magnetic fields could hold and direct fuel too hot to handle?

I had no awareness of my ignorance because I know nothing of the topic. Something similar is happening in the story of Jesus speaking to the Samaritan woman at the well. It is recorded in the fourth chapter of John’s Gospel (John 4:5-42). This woman knew many things. She could tell Jesus was a Jew, perhaps because of his dress or another feature. She, as a Samaritan, knew it was a departure from custom for him even to speak to her, or ask for a drink of water from her. She learned that he had some supernatural access to wisdom: he knew of her marital history without her telling him. She knew that her Samaritan ancestors worshiped where Jesus and she were standing, at that sacred well, on the mountain, and also that the Jews worship in Jerusalem. She knew what she knew.

What she did not know before was revealed in the conversation was:

1.      That Jesus had something to offer called “living water” satisfying a core something for all time, so that one never thirsted again;

2.      That the time is now for “true worship” in which one worships God, who is spirit, “in spirit and truth”;

3.      That Jesus is the Messiah who had been expected for ages to come.

She could not have known these things. She could not have known that when she told others of Jesus, they too would come to a living faith in Jesus as the Savior of the world. She came to the well that day ready to fill her vessels with water. Something else was filled within her. That deep conversation with Jesus gave her knowledge that she didn’t even know she didn’t know. You may not have any idea, but you can ask for a drink, and Jesus will give you living water. Drinking will quench you so that you will never be thirsty. The water he gives will become in you a spring of water gushing up to eternal life. Ask.