OnFriday, April 20, 1962, Howard Thurman delivered a Good Friday sermon at Boston University’s Marsh Chapel. “He came to me with his eyes and asked for water,” Thurman began in a retelling of the Samaritan woman at the well, “stretched out his hand and spoke. His mind burned into mine like the noon sun. My pitcher of thoughts broke.”
He described in those words what so many Christians — indeed all those with a deep and abiding spiritual yearning — desire: a life-changing direct encounter with the Divine.