In the beginning was the — image?

“Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen,” says the writer of Hebrews. “Seeing is not believing–it is only seeing,” agrees Princess Irene’s grandmother in The Princess and the Goblin.

Where does that leave someone today, in the age of the image?

Handicapped, I think, based on my now familiar frustration as I read this morning about Jesus and the woman at the well. The Bible is so maddeningly terse.  What did they look like? What was the woman’s body language when asked to bring her husband back? Where were the inflections in Jesus’s voice? What were the details of the setting? What look did the disciples have on their faces? What is the expression of someone brought from death to life by the Son of God in the open air while going about the mundane tasks of life?

Who needs to know? responds God. If you needed that, it would be in there.

What the matter-of-fact tale does make clear is that it was the most un-exhorting, un-manipulative, un-controlling exchange imaginable. Jesus, who in the spareness of scripture sometimes strikes me as severe, was unbelievably gentle. The lack of elaboration just underscores what a low key conversation this was. But underneath the commonplace appearance, one woman, then two more days worth of souls, crossed from death to life.