You already know... ♥
We are continuing our 30 Days of Gratitude! If you missed the scoop about why we’re celebrating, be sure to check out Episode One. Yesterday, we talked about how to be grateful even when you feel like you’re being misunderstood. Today, we’re going to be discussing Day Nine’s Topic: Come Here, Woman!
This is honestly one of my favorite chapters in my book. This chapter is about a woman in the bible who was caught in the act of adultery. Now I’m not sure of all the logistics, and it seems kinda shady that a group of men would catch a woman in the act of adultery… but Jesus wasn’t in the business of spilling tea, so some stuff we will never fully know. However, this is what we find when we come on the scene: a woman who was caught in the act of adultery was brought before Jesus for judgment.
Now we all know that according to biblical standards and the laws of the land we live in (if you live in America) that adultery is wrong. Let’s just establish that before we move forward.
In the story (which can be found in John 8:1-11), Jesus was at the Temple early one morning. As usual, a group of people gathered, and He began to teach them. Let me put a pin right there and say this. If you are called to do something, there will always be people for you to do it for. Remember that. As Jesus was teaching these people, a group of teachers and Pharisees came with the woman who had been caught in adultery. Now if you don’t know what Pharisees are, think of them as the stuck up and self-righteous people you have encountered in your life. No judgment, though. Anyway, they came to Jesus with this woman, and they were always trying to trip Him up in some way. That’s another thing. When you are doing what God put you here to do, there will always be people who will try to trip you up. They’ll try to use your words against you. They’ll try to use what you believe in and stand on against you. Now if you remember the podcast I did about church folks, you’ll remember that I said that Jesus had comebacks for days. DAYS.
So here come the teachers and Pharisees, and they say (and I’m paraphrasing), “Jesus, we caught this woman in adultery, and the law of Moses says to stone her. So what do you say?” Now the New Living Translation of the Bible says, “They were trying to trap Him into saying something 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, but let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone!’ The 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 the woman, ‘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.’”
And that was it. That’s the last we heard of her.
Usually, I would give you three things to be thankful for, but today, I’m only going to give you one.
Be grateful for the stones that fell to the ground.
I could spend time telling you about how we should be gracious towards others and how we should give others the same grace we wish to receive… but if there is one thing I am coming to realize the older I get, it’s that so many people aren’t even aware of the grace they have received.
We get so caught up in what everybody else is doing to us. We love to tell people, “Well God said, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay’ and He’s gonna get you for what you did to me” - but we forget that the same measure we give is what is gonna be given to us. So when we say “God’s gonna get you for what you did to me,” what follows that is “God’s gonna get me for what I did to so-and-so”. How would you feel if every time you said the first thing, the second one happened?
Now I’m not telling you to be passive and let people ...
