Do you remember that story in the Bible where the Pharisees brought a woman before Jesus who was caught in the act of Adultery? I bring this story up, not because of all that – but because of how Jesus responds. It’s interesting, isn’t it… the Pharisees thought they had him. They were going to trick him, no matter what he chose to do in that situation. They thought they knew what He was going to do. They asked him what he was going to do. But, instead of answering as the Pharisees expected, he bent down and wrote in the sand.
The Bible doesn’t say what he wrote. But gosh, can you just imagine the shame that this woman must have been feeling? Who knows what was actually happening in that situation. Women were treated horribly in that culture. Maybe she knew it was wrong – but she longed for some sort of connection. Maybe she didn’t mean for any of it to happen, but maybe she felt worth it for a moment. Maybe she felt wanted. Seen. Valuable.
And to be caught, in the middle of a sin she probably knew she shouldn’t be doing, and be dragged in front of religious leaders — and then Jesus. Maybe naked, maybe not. But definitely nakedly baring her soul, and her scars, to the world. By force.
I imagine that her eyes stared at her feet the entire time. Her face red, a little. Tears burning in her eyes, a few of them slipping between her eyelashes and down her face. She is trying so hard to be brave. To be strong. But the religious people have yet again judged where they didn’t know the whole story. If the woman had been able to write her own story, in that moment, I think she would have scratched a few names in the sand herself. It might have looked something like this: worthless, sinner, disgusting, failure, hopeless, shame, guilt, I don’t matter, b r o k e n .
Jesus scratched those names out. Wiped the sand clean, so that he would have room to write some words of his own. Worthy, he wrote. That caught the woman’s eye, as she was still too scared to look into his face. She slowly tilted her head a little upwards so that she could read what he was writing. Beautiful. Chosen. Valuable. Pure. Grace – given. You m a t t e r.
She now wouldn’t be able to stop the tears from running down her face, but these tears were different. They weren’t laced in shame and guilt, but in a certain kind of freedom that only people who have experienced God’s amazing grace and endless love first hand, know.
The Pharisees and others standing around probably would not have seen what he was writing. They are so blinded by the outside : what is right and wrong in all situations, that all things are either black or white, that they couldn’t see the girl standing there. Broken. In need of grace and love, that she knows she doesn’t deserve. She doesn’t need condemnation in that moment. But so much g r a c e.
Have you had a “Jesus writing in the sand” moment? What is Jesus writing in your sand?
A Beautiful Mess 