John 4:40

The Samaritan townspeople come to Jesus; and after spending some time him they ask him to stay in town longer. He does just that.  In fact Jesus stays in town for two days.  John 4:40 EFP

A couple things strike me as I consider this text.  After the initial curiosity factor—after the people meet this mysterious man, the people stay longer.  In fact, it seems the people grow fond of Jesus pretty quickly.  I don’t know what they do for the remainder of the day.  Perhaps they just listen to him teach them things they have never heard before.  Perhaps they ask questions they have wanted to ask for years, but have been afraid of asking their religious leaders.  They spend the remainder of the daylight hours with Jesus, and when the day is done, they ask him to spend the night and talk some more the next day.

The townspeople fall in love with Jesus simply by spending time with Him.  It happens.  There is something about Jesus that elicits affinity the longer we spend time with him.  The townspeople were simply trying to understand the attraction to Jesus through the eyes of the woman who told them about him.  But now they wanted him to spend the night so they could hear more from Jesus the next day.

And the surprising thing (perhaps not too surprising) is that he accepts the invitation and spends the night and the next day in Sychar, with the colorful woman and her townspeople friends.  This must have been a colorful bunch of people.  The stuffy ones probably thought it below them to run outside of town to meet some wannabe-prophet.  Most likely not everyone came out, but those that did never regretted it. There is no record of what the disciples did all night.  But those that spent the time with Jesus discovered a truth about him, you come as you are but you never leave the same after you’ve had an encounter with the Messiah.  I wonder if I would have stopped what I was doing and run out of the city to meet this Man.  I am not even sure I do that often enough nowadays.  I bet if I ask him today to stay longer with me so we can talk some more he would in a second.  He does it every day.