Focus 5- 11
8 1 but Jesus went to the Mount of Olives.2 At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them. 3 The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group 4 and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. 5 In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” 6 They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. 7 When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” 8 Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.9 At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. 10 Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”
11 “No one, sir,” she said.“Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”
As I meditate on this scripture, I can't help but wonder if Jesus wrote on the ground as a metaphor for forgiveness. After all the ground back then wasn't like the ground today. I imagine it to be somewhat of a dirt like road, full of dust that if you were to write on it whatever written would be quickly erased because of the constant road traffic of the daily travelers in the city. In this scripture, he wrote on the ground twice before he told the accused woman to go and sin no more. It was never mentioned in scripture what was actually written but the thought of him writing on the ground really intrigues me!
Fast forward to today -----> We all can relate to that woman, maybe being caught in an act or simply being accused of something or the other. Whether the accusation was true or not, it's possible that we still have some lingering unforgiveness in our hearts about the matter. Jesus wrote on the ground before he gave his final verdict of forgiveness to the accused woman. Have you chosen to forgive whoever have accused you? Or are you still holding on to whatever "it" is? If you haven't as yet, how about you write on the sand after you give your final verdict of forgiveness to those who's hurt you in the past. If we learn to write in the sand and surrender our hurt to the waves of God's forgiveness, mercy and love, he will in turn wash the sand of our hurt away never to remember the hurt or bitterness anymore. No matter what "it" is, choose to write it in the sand today and walk away knowing that God hasn't condemn you, nor the person that accused you, and neither should you.
(c) Lorraine Benjamin 2012
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