A Bit Player, Maybe Just a Cameo Appearance...

   Today, as I read the Scriptures for the Psalm reading and the Gospel one, I am struck by two incidents:

   One, in Psalm 105, talks of Joseph, the boy sold into slavery, and taken to Egypt, where he becomes the savior of his family and of a whole people.

   "He had sent a man ahead of them, Joseph, who was sold as a slave."

   The other in John, chapter 4, concerns the woman at the well in Samaria, where Jesus pauses for rest and a drink. This woman is not named, but her story shows her role in the on-going story of God.

   "So the woman left her water jar and went away into town and said to the people,  “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?”

   These two individuals both have roles to play. One even has his name in the program, while the other is one of many bit players, just a part of the scene to move the story along, just a person passing along the road of life that God used to impact the people of her town.

    I sense that there is a correlation in these two isolated instances. Both persons are used by God to advance the Kingdom, and there is no difference in the importance of either role. Both have parts to play, and both are put in their respective scenes for His purposes.

   Joseph may have had an inkling when he had those dreams way back in his youth, but I suppose that, on the day that Pharoah made him second in command of the whole kingdom, he got out of his bed without a clue that this was the day. The woman at the well in Samaria did what she always did, she went out in the middle of the day to get water for her house. She had no idea what the day would bring.

   God appeared to Joseph in a dream many years before he used him. God, in flesh, appeared to the woman and used her that very day. Joseph had many years to be faithful to God in his various roles, while the woman's cameo appearance in His Story seemed to come out of the blue.

   My prayer this morning, is that God will make me sensitive to the place he has me in for this day, and if I need to leave my jar at the well and go, that I will do.