Following is an excerpt from the Wonderstruck: Awaken to the Nearness of God Member Book from Lifeway.
Take a moment to ponder the power, strength, holiness, and might of God. Reflect on the mystery that God not only created all things but holds all things together. Consider the limitless love God displayed when His only Son Jesus came to earth for what some might consider the real Mission: impossible.
Sometimes the way God reveals His wonder is far subtler. One of my favorite stories is an unsuspecting man whose main distinction in the Bible is that he carries a water pot. The Scripture doesn't even say the water pitcher is particularly heavy or huge or decorated. Just a plain water pitcher.
Yet in making preparations for the celebration of the final Passover with the disciples, Jesus instructs several of His followers, "He sent two of His disciples and said to them, "Go into the city, and a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him" (Mark 14:13).
The man is likely inconvenienced and possibly embarrassed to carry such a water pitcher. Why? One Bible scholar notes that women were primarily responsible for going to the well and bringing water to the home:
"The custom of carrying water in the Holy Land is ancient. However, it was and is the woman's job to go to the well or spring with a pitcher and carry water to [her] home. When the Gibeonites deceived Joshua (9:3-27), he judged them and made them servants to chop wood and carry water. This punishment may seem mild to us, but how humiliating it was to a man - carrying water in public - a woman's job! This helps us to better understand how easy it was for the disciples to identify the man carrying the water pot when Jesus sought an upper room [in which] to eat the Passover. It was not a question of seeking one man out of many carrying a water pot - this man would stick out above all others, in that he alone would be carrying one. A man may carry a water skin, but seldom does one carry a water pot." *
Yet the water pot was the very thing that God used to help the disciples recognize who they were to follow. The disciples followed the man into a house - the same house where Christ's final Passover was hosted.
Sometimes I imagine the man huffing and puffing, upset he has to do such a low, menial task. I speculate that as a servant of the house, maybe he is having a bad day as he carries the plain water pitcher. My hunch is that he doesn't have a clue he is being used by God to lead the disciples to the upper room - a place they'd celebrate their final Passover with Christ, a place they'd soon wait for the promised Holy Spirit.
The miracle isn't only found in an unsuspecting man carrying a plain water pitcher, but the water he carries in the pitcher. Maybe the water is served to the disciples as they ate the Passover. Or maybe, just maybe, the water is used when Jesus washed the disciples' feet. On this side of heaven, we'll never know.
What we do know is that God chose to use an unsuspecting man carrying a plain water pitcher to lead the disciples on their way. And that leaves me wonderstruck. Because if God can use that man, then He can use anyone, anytime He fancies - including you and me.
* Robert Boyd, World's Bible Handbook (Iowa Falls, IA: World Bible Publishers, 1991), 122.