Christian Counseling Service -- Devotions

You restore my soul

Monday, April 3, 2017

From John 8
Jesus said, "Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone."

I was a Lutheran student at a Lutheran university. Each semester I bought books beyond the class requirements, and my parents paid for them. I didn't actually tell them that the books were "extra." I think I felt grateful. I know I felt entitled.

My secret-keeping began to betray me. The same bookstore sold lots of other stuff, and I began to steal. Shoplifting, it's called. My weak conscience withered a little more.

One day a middle-aged clerk found me in a corner and said she'd seen me taking things. I looked at her, looked down, looked away. "I want you to stop," she said.

She might as well have been my mom. My conscience wasn't completely dead. Mother-words still worked on me. And I did stop.

There have been a few more little crimes. They have mostly not come back to haunt me. I did spend one night in jail in Gary, Indiana before my freshman comp teacher bailed us out. But now, when I go to Danville Correctional Center and pass through the ten locked doors, it's as a volunteer chaplain, not a resident. For that I credit God and my spiritual guardians, above and below.

The guys at Danville like to celebrate Mother's Day. It means much more to them than Father's Day, and I guess I get that. Mothers can look right through the lies and love you anyway. My mother loved me that way. The clerk in the bookstore did too.

Jesus' mother Mary loved her son, and she was always in the back of his mind.

So now, as Jesus looks away from the accused woman thrown down on the ground, perhaps he thinks of his mom. He's mostly silent, scratching something in the sand while the self-righteous elders of the church surround and threaten their target, their victim, their prey.

Then he lays them out. "Whoever is without sin, any of you? You be the first to throw your stone."

My mother, my quiet bookstore clerk, me ... we've all sinned. Not so sure about Mary, and Jesus ... well, Christian theology is clear. He was tempted but never sinned. That may be so, but he understands it. He is not only able, but willing to identify with the broken woman, to bend down in the dirt and sit quietly with her while her silenced attackers leave the scene.

Gerald May says that "sin occurs when personal willfulness become so important that one forgets one's true nature and grounding in the divine." God made me, we are always connected. But I can forget, repress deny that. And so I sin.

That goes for you, too. Jesus sits in the dirt with all of us. Then with his boundless confidence in God's kids, Jesus looks into our eyes and says, "I don't accuse you. Go and sin no more."

These words, Jesus, these words of hope and truth, you speak so softly and with mercy right into my life. Your commitment for justice never falters, and its foundation of mercy never fails. We can watch and pray, we can learn from you, we can share that same mercy-centered justice with each other. Let your goodness and kindness follow us all the days of our lives.

Devotions Archive

You restore my soul

Monday, April 3, 2017