DWELLING WITH GOD
Take the Detour BY MARY REARICK PAUL Have you ever taken an intentional detour? I was in Dallas a few years ago and decided I needed to go to Waco, Texas. Why? I wanted to see Magnolia Farms. I’ve watched so many shows with the Gaines’s, it felt right to stop and see what had been built over the years. There are also detours that you take because of a deeper sense of direction. You re-route your plans in ways that don’t make sense. When a college student, I was walking home from work and had a distinct sense that I needed to go out of my way and stop at a nursing home. Why? I didn’t know and I was tired. Nevertheless, I took the detour to spend some time with a woman that I had been occasionally visiting. What I didn’t know was that God was going to use her to speak into my life in powerful ways that I still hold near to my heart. In the fourth chapter of John, when reading the story about Jesus meeting the Samaritan woman at the well, we often miss the significance of the fourth verse when it says, “But he had to go through Samaria.” Why did Jesus have to go through Samaria? If you were to look at a map, Samaria is on the way to Galilee. But what we might miss is that for centuries, Samaritans and Jews who occupied neighboring lands and practiced similar religions were deeply divided. As in all disputes, there was a long history of hurt and pain. The result was that Jewish people would avoid Samaria and take a longer route to avoid contact. So why did Jesus have to go through Samaria? It all begins at the well in Sychar. For the original hearer of this story, a meeting of a man and a woman at a well would cause an expectation. Abraham finds a wife for his son, Jacob, at a well.1 Moses meets his wife, Zipporah, at a well.2 Wells are a place of romance and marriage. They would connect that this was a type of love story, but this love story has a twist. We discover this woman does not need another promise of marriage but something much more. The love of Jesus is expressed in a deeper way. In this encounter, we find the longest dialogue Jesus has with anyone in the Gospels. This woman’s story is changed Summer 2026
and enriched as she engages Jesus in conversation around questions of theology. She has an understanding of her faith tradition and therefore the ability to challenge, to wonder, and ultimately to be convinced. Jesus shows her great respect as she asks important questions. Her approach is not like the Pharisees hoping to trick Jesus but rather as one who is hungry to hear and learn like a student with a rabbi. Sometimes people have created a life story for the woman out of some details: she came to the well at noon, she had been married five times and she was not married to the person she lived with. From these details, it is often assumed that she was ostracized from her community and made poor moral choices. I would ask us to consider other options. Given the limitations of women’s choices, the reasons for having five husbands would not have been hers to make. These losses could have been because of death, divorce (often for being barren), or a social custom of being given to a household. We encounter here a woman with a deep history of pain and trauma. I would propose Jesus had to go to Samaria because this woman who had great pain and great thirst mattered to God. And through this woman a whole village of people who mattered to God came to know Christ. And by watching this unfolding scene, the disciples came to know that taking a detour can bring you into the center of places you might not otherwise choose but can change your life and open your eyes to people who matter to God. It might not make sense in the moment, but there are gifts of grace in the detours. Check your internal Google map for the day and add the addendum, “and whatever detour God has for me.” Dr. Mary Rearick Paul, D.Min, serves as the Pastor of First Church of the Nazarene in Bangor, Maine. 1 Genesis 29:1–20 - 2 Exodus 2:15–22
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