Carrying Something You Shouldn't?

Then the woman left her water jar and went back to town.

John 4:28 

What would you do if someone knew your deepest darkest secret about your past?  Would you freak out? Would you feel embarrassed? Would you feel relieved? Fact: we all have a past and not all of it is good.  Yet we tend to carry the burden of fear that someone will discover that we aren't perfect and we aren't as good as we want people to believe.  

 Remember the story where Jesus met the Samaritan woman at the well?  Jesus broke through the prejudice whereby Jews and Samaritans did not speak to each other or interact with each other when He asked the woman for a drink of water.  The fact that the woman came to get water in the middle of the day revealed that she was considered an outcast by her own people.  

Jesus revealed her painful past to her and she said He was a prophet.  When Jesus told her that He was the long awaited Messiah, she left her water jar and ran back to the town telling everyone about Jesus.  If you think about it, her water jar represents the burden of her past she'd been carrying for so long.  When Jesus revealed it to her, she didn't have to carry that burden any longer...she had been freed from that burden.

How about you?  Are you carrying the burden of the past or have you been freed from that burden through Christ?