Our Scripture focus this week is the story of Jesus and the woman from Samaria at the well from John 4:1-29. Jesus' meeting and conversation with this woman is filled with power and significance for understanding God's hope and power to unravel the shame at the root of our personal and community pain. Jesus' example of making contact across cultural differences without attack, shame or blame reveals hopeful possibility for our world of increasing suspicion and sectarian violence. In Jesus' day, it was counter cultural for a Jewish man like Jesus to speak to a Samaritan woman at all. And John's gospel says plainly, "Jesus had to go through Samaria." As if to say, there is something we will not know about God unless we too join Jesus in making movement and making contact across culture and power differences. Who are the people that avoid you? Who are the people you avoid? Consciously or unconsciously? When you really start thinking about that, the reasons often go back to self-preservation, an attempt to protect ourselves from discomfort and perhaps further harm. Interestingly, the "eternal life" Jesus came to bring addresses this very worldly reality.