The why question is not the only one found in the scriptures that is directed towards God. There are questions in the scriptures where people are looking to learn or gather information. Some, ask questions to mock or ridicule or tempt. Others invoke, plead, or cry out of desperation with a question. Some examples include: Cain asking God; “Am I my brothers keeper?” Abraham asked God, “Will not the judge of the earth do right?” John the baptist asked Jesus; “Are you the one to come or shall we look for another.” Caiaphas, the high priest asked Jesus; “Art thou the Christ, the son of the blessed?”
You see, our questions especially those directed towards God can frame us, make us vulnerable, transparent. This may be why so many people are hesitant to talk about God or the things of God because their deepest innermost thoughts are brought to the surface for all to see.
But it is these very questions and their answers that define us as stated in the proverbs; “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.” Questions, whether pertaining to the natural or spiritual are like a bucket lowered into a well. Someone has dug the well for sure with their knowledge. Let’s use Albert Enstein for instance with the Theory of Relativity. Others have come later and lowered the bucket with questions and drawn water of additional knowledge and understanding.
In the Old Testament the Law was like an deep well which was dug watering the Israelites and Jewish nation for generations. The Father himself dug a new well for mankind in Jesus Christ providing mankind living water. The old well of the law of Moses was now being replaced with a new well in Jesus. I see the questions asked of Jesus by the Samaritan woman to be the most interesting of all.
There were three questions asked by the Samaritan woman found in John 4:6-25. The first of these questions was; “How is it that thou, being a Jew, askest drink which am a woman of Samaria? for the jews have no dealings with the Samaritans. This was a question of custom.
The second question was; “Sir thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep: from whence then hast thou that living water? This was a question of: source, provision or supply. Her third question is stated as; “Art thou greater than our father Jacob, which gave us the well and drank thereof himself, and his children, and his cattle? This third question was a question of authority, power and position.
Jesus told the Samaritan woman things about herself that no one else but she herself knew. She just had all her questions answered by Jesus causing her to leave her pitcher and run back to her village. Here she told all what she had both seen and heard. She now asked the question of them; “Is not this the Christ?
Drinking from the well Jesus provides causes regeneration and transformation. This was a woman known in her community as a prostitute. Her community told her as stated in John 4:42 “And said unto the woman, Now we believe, not because of thy saying: for we have heard him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Savior of the world.” Many questions in the scriptures are directed towards God and at times we do the same but the Samaritan woman was transformed in doing so and became the first Evangelist. May our questions towards God do the same.