In the Garden with My Savior

Jesus returned to the Mount of Olives, but early the next morning he was back again at the Temple. A crowd soon gathered, and he sat down and taught them. As he was speaking, the teachers of religious law and Pharisees brought a woman they had caught in the act of adultery. They put her in front of the crowd. "Teacher", they said to Jesus, "this woman was caught in the very act of adultery. The law of Moses says to stone her. What do you say?" They were trying to trap him into saying something that they could use against him, but Jesus stooped down and wrote in the dust with his finger. They kept demanding an answer, so he stood up again and said, "All right, stone her. But let those who have never sinned throw the first stone!" Then he stooped down again and wrote in the dust. When the accusers heard this, they slipped away one by one, beginning with the oldest, until only Jesus was left in the middle of the crowd with the woman. Then Jesus stood up again and said to her, "Where are your accusers? Didn't even one of them condemn you?" "No, Lord," she said. And Jesus said, "Neither do I. Go and sin no more." John 8:1-11 (NLT Life Application Study Bible) "Jesus stooped down and wrote in the dust with his finger." The woman stood there in the middle of a room filled with people that Jesus was teaching. Can you imagin the humiliation she must have been feeling? She had no escape from the shame that must have been washing over her. She had just been caught in the act of adultery, so you can imagine what she must have been wearing and what her appearance looked like. All eyes were on her, including Jesus's eyes. She was completely surrounded with judgemental glares. Little did she know that there was one person in that room who did not condemn her, Jesus felt some kind of pain for her as He stooped down and His finger glided across that dust. I wonder what Jesus wrote in that dust. The Bible doesn't mention the words that He wrote that brought the judgemental glares to a halt. Perhaps He wrote the word "Forgiven", or maybe He wrote the word "Loved" to let the adulterous woman know that He wasn't looking at her sin as much as He was looking at what He saw in her beyond the sin that she had been living in. Maybe He wrote the words "All sin and fall short" to help her feel less alone and less condemned by the Pharisees who somehow felt that they were sinless people if they followed all of their rituals. Maybe Jesus wrote out the Ten Commandments to show the teachers and Pharisees that they were not blameless either, after all, He did tell them that those who have never sinned should be the first one to throw a stone at this woman. Whatever it was that He wrote in that dust was mighty powerful to make the teachers and Pharisees leave the crime scene in which they had created. The words that Jesus wrote were powerful enough to bring hope to this woman who had been living a life of loneliness, sin and shame. Jesus saw past her sin, He saw past her shame and He saw a woman who had been broken and sad. He saw a woman who had chosen the life she had chosen because of her brokenness and loneliness, and He wanted her to know that those sins were not what defines her. He showed her that her sins were not all that she was, they were not her identity, and her sins were not His focal point when He looked at her. He gave her hope when He stooped down and wrote in that dust. He gave her back her true identity when He stood up for her in a crowd that condemned her. We do not know what words He wrote, but we do know that those words held mighty conviction and power, enough so to make the naysayers flee, and enough to mend a broken woman and make her feel worthy again. I imagine Jesus would do the exact same thing for us if we were brought into the middle of a Temple room and our sins were shone on us like a spotlight. I imagine He would stoop down and write the same thing in the dust for us. I imagine that His eyes would look on us with love as our eyes fill with tears after we look down in that dust and see the words that His loving hands have written for us. That is just how loving our beautiful Savior is, He doesn't see the sin as much as He sees the beauty in each of us. His love for us causes Him to stoop down for us and get His healing hands dirty. Those hands glide across our hearts and clean us as they glide across that dust and write a new identity on us. Those words are beautiful enough to mend a broken heart, yet they have the power to convict the enemy and clear a room. Oh, how I wish I knew the words that Jesus wrote in that dust. Whatever those words were, I know one thing is for sure, they were so very beautiful!