Grace For My Past

Been re-reading John's account of Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well of Sychar. The woman's response to her encounter with Christ has got me to thinking.
The Bible says she ... left her waterpot, and went into the city and said to the men, "Come see a man who told me all the things that I have done."

'Come see a man who told me all the things that I have done?' I don't think I'd like that. I know I wouldn't be comfortable with it. Neither would you.
I don't like for anyone to bring up my past. I don't like to talk about it. I don't even like to think about very much of it.

I might be willing to talk a bit about 'some' of the things I have done. Like the time I hit a half-court game-winning shot in eighth grade basketball against the best team in our league. (Very cool day.) Or when I did a great job at work and was rewarded. Or when I was given special recognition for my achievements. There are slices of my past that come to mind that I may be willing to talk about.
But for the most part, I don't want to go there. And I don't want anybody else going there either. It's nobody's business. You see, there's a lot of stuff back there that I'd rather just forget about. A lot of stupid stuff that I hope no one ever brings up again. And I certainly don't need some stranger rooting around in my past, telling me everything I've ever done.

Jesus told this woman all the things she had ever done. It wasn't pretty. She had a 'man problem.' She'd been married to five of them, and she was living with yet another. Imagine the hurt and anger and shame in her past. Not stuff she probably wanted to talk about with anyone other than maybe her therapist.
But amazingly, when Jesus told here all the things she had done, she was happy about it. You can sense her excitement as she gushes to the men in town to come meet this man she'd been talking to. (Notice she told the men. I'm guessing the women in town didn't want to hear what she had to say. But the men sure did.)
"Come see a man who told me all the things that I have done." It seems her past was okay in Jesus' hands.

He has a way of doing that. Of making our past alright. I think it's His promise in Hebrew 8 to "...be merciful to (our) iniquities, and remember (our) sins no more." Or His promise in 2 Corinthians 5:19 that He won't "count (our) trespasses against (us)."
We can trust Him with our past. He can tell us all the things we've done, and yet we're safe. In fact, that's the only way our past becomes okay. Letting Him go there. Letting Him deal with all of the junk in our past and making it okay. That's the beginning.

The woman at the well allowed Jesus to delve into her past like no one had ever done before. When she went away, she still had the same past. She'd was still a five-time divorcee living with someone she wasn't married to. But it was different. Instead of hiding her past, she was proclaiming it. It had been touched by the grace of the Savior. Now it was her testimony.