Love is…written in the dust

I did not even have time to pull the shawl around my shoulders they came like wolves. I remember the way one of them grabbed my wrist, as if by touching me made him righteous. They did not speak or ask my name, I was no longer a person to them, just evidence, just an object of disgust.

 I still feel the heat of my own shame crawling up my neck as they dragged me through the streets. People turned their heads, others stared, one man muttered, “Disgusting.” I wanted to scream, to explain, to vanish. Mostly I wanted to die before they killed me. The dust stung my eyes as I stumbled to the temple courtyard. My knees hit stone, my heart was beating like a frightened bird caught in a snare.

 They threw me at the feet of the teacher, I knew who he was, I had heard rumours of him, this Jesus. He healed the unclean, that he touched lepers, that he spoke kindly to the lost. But now, he was a man standing in my judgment, and I was the accused, the bait. I was ready for the guilty verdict, I knew how these things went. “Teacher,” they barked, “this woman was caught in the very act of adultery, the Law says to stone her. What do you say?”

 He did not answer.

He knelt, bent low, almost at my level and he began to write in the dirt with his finger, slowly, quietly, as if he had all the time in the world. This I did not expect, I know he too would find me guilty.

 But there was something different about him, something intimate, even in the way he wrote, as though the dust itself deserved attention. They pressed him demanding judgment, but when he stood, he looked at them as if he knew them, and said the strangest thing, “Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone.” In that moment I closed my eyes and waited for the first stone to strike, but there was silence.

 Then a stone hit the ground beside me, another stone fell, then another and another and yet another, until there were no more stones to throw. When I opened my eyes, the oldest had already turned and walked away, the younger ones followed, none of them looked at me, after all I was just the object of their entrapment. The temple was quiet, no judgments, no crowd, just the sound of my own breathing.

 Then I heard his steps, I did not dare look up. I supposed I need a lecture…I deserved one, but his voice came soft and kind, “Woman, where are they?”

“They have gone.”

“Has no one condemned you?”

My voice came from somewhere deep, somewhere I had not visited in years.

“No one, sir.”

“Then neither do I condemn you. Go, and from now on, leave this life of sin.”

 He could have humiliated me, at the very list he could have quotes the law but is instead, he set me free.

He did not tell me I had not sinned; he just told me it was not who I was anymore.

 In this life, we will meet those who are neither pressing ahead nor falling behind, but who simply are dwelling in the moment allotted to them, and then we may meet them with approval, or disapproval. At such a moment, we stand not merely before another, but before our own hearts, faced with the choice to judge by appearances, or to see through the eyes of grace.

 Yet here the question arises, and not without cause.
Does this merciful grace make light of sin?
Do we do evil that good may come?
God forbid.

Love, true love, is not blind, nor forgetful. It remembers rightly. For love does not pretend that wrong was never done, rather it leads us into that place where wrong no longer matters. Love binds up the broken-hearted and leads us from woundedness to wholeness. It is the kindness of the Lord that leads to repentance, not condemnation.

This love does not merely pass over transgression, it removes it, casts it into the depths of the sea, remembers it no more. As it is written, “I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more” (Jer. 31:34).

If you have stood before others, stripped of defence, trembling in shame?
Then remember, He stooped low, and wrote in the dust.
He did not speak accusation, but mercy.

He turned to the one left standing and said, “Woman, where are your accusers? Has no one condemned you?” She answered, “No one, Lord.” And He said, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and sin no more” (John 8:10–11).

Here is love not soft on sin, and strong in mercy.
Not forgetful of evil, but triumphant over it.
A love that holds no record of wrongs, not because it is careless, but because it has carried the cost.

Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the one to whom the Lord does not impute iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit
(Ps. 32:1–2).

For this is the way of Christ.

He has not come to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.

All that he asks it that we leave our life of sin, and in Him we learn the truest mystery of love is that keeps no record of wrongs.

 Jim Varsos