Daily Manna · Day 354 · December 20
Worshippers the Father Seeks
“But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him.”
Which room do you avoid because of the version of you that is filed there?
Jesus says this to a woman at a well at noon, which is the wrong time to be there. Women drew water early, together; she is alone in the heat, and by the end of the conversation you know why. When he gets close to it, she changes the subject to religion, and specifically to venue: our fathers worshipped in this mountain, and ye say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship. It is the oldest available move. If the conversation can be made a debate about the correct address, it is no longer about her.
He does not take the debate and he does not let the subject go. He moves worship off geography entirely: the hour cometh, and now is. In spirit, meaning from the actual person rather than the performance, and in truth, which is not the same as sincerity, because he has just told her plainly that salvation is of the Jews. Honest and correct, not honest instead of correct.
The sentence that follows has no parallel anywhere else. The Father seeketh such to worship him. Not permits. Not accepts. Seeks, which means somebody is out looking, and the person he found that day was a woman with a history who was avoiding her own neighbours.
So there is a true thing you have never said because it sounded ugly, and you are welcome to say it to him today. That sentence is worship in the sense he means it here, and nothing tidier would be. Nobody is going to check whether you did. And when you next walk into the room you have been avoiding, you may walk in as somebody who was being looked for rather than somebody on trial. The seeking was going on before you decided anything about it.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 354 is That Ye May Prove (Romans 12:2).