What did you write on the ground that day?
Were you stopping to pray, to wait for instruction from your Father before answering the question-trap laid for you? Is that how it worked when you were here? Did you silently pray for guidance the way that we do when we need to know His will? Is that part of being set in skin, even when you are God Incarnate?
Did you write her story? Like you did with the Samaritan woman, did you recount everything she had ever done? Did she look at it and know that you were fully aware of her past? Did she fear your answer? Or did you write their misdeeds – the Pharisees and teachers – did you make a neat little list of their transgressions? Did you put their names beside each sin? Did you take a moment to lay the groundwork for your next command, that he without sin could throw the first stone? And when you gave the command, did you stare holes in their souls? Did they know they had been searched?
Did you write the law of Moses? Did you recount that both adulterer and adulteress were to be put to death? Did you write his name and ask where he was? And when they ignored this, did you list the number of witnesses needed to condemn a person to death? Did any of them get it? Did they finally recognize that You sat before them writing the law with the same Eternal Hand that had placed it on stone tablets for Moses to carry down the mountain? Or did they carry their stone hearts away, souls refusing to see?
May my heart never turn to stone, Lord. Let me never forget that I am the woman who stood before You that day – the woman You refused to condemn, whose dignity You allowed to be restored.
Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”
“No one, sir,” she said.
“Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go and leave your life of sin.”
John 8:10-11