A Modern Day's Interpretation of John 8:1-11

It was the kind of night you hope to forget, but never seem to be able to. My palms were sweaty as I thought about what I was about to do. I knew that it wasn’t right, but I felt like it was my only option. What else could I do? It had to be done.

Just as I finally made up my mind that I was going to go through with it, the door began to shake fiercely from the pounding on the outside. The screams were just as loud, if not louder, and the pounding in my heart matched the pounding on the door beat for beat. I could tell it was a group of men, angry men. And they were looking for me.

“Come out now! We know you’re in there! We know what you are doing! Open this door, now!”

Paralyzed by fear in the middle of the living room, I didn’t know which way to turn. Was there someplace I could hide? Was there a way to escape out of another door? The sudden thud on the window confirmed the answer for me: there was no place to go. My heart sank as the deep thudding soon turned into a loud crash on the floor. A small piece of glass dug into my shin as the window-pane fell to the ground. If I wouldn’t agree to come to them, they were coming to me.

One by one they surrounded me, screamed in my face, spit at me, and called me every name in the book. One man, the one with the huge, hairy hands, grabbed my upper arm and squeezed it until I was sure he was going to snap it right off. Pulling me to follow in his direction, my body gave me no option to refuse. He was easily three times my own weight and my body quickly followed behind him. I wished my arm would have fallen off at that moment. At least then I could have tried to run away.

Once we got outside I was thrown into the back of their car and taken to a dingy cream colored building that had one leafless tree out front. Most of the letters had fallen off the side of the building, so I couldn’t make out the name. When we got inside it was painfully obvious: a jail. Pushed by the large, hairy handed man once more into a cell, I tripped on my dress and fell to the ground. That was when I first noticed the cut on my leg. I guess my mind was too focused on them getting into the house earlier to pay attention.

I waited in the tiny cell for what seemed like an eternity, cold and alone, until someone finally came to get me. Scruffy and slightly chubby, his breath the scent of yesterday’s garlic bread, he herded me down a long corridor and into a well-dressed room with a large ornate wood desk in the front the color of a Hershey’s bar. The room was filled with deep yells and insults, fingers all pointing at me. The angry mob all seemed to sit together, nobody by me. I’ve never wanted to disappear more than at that moment. I could feel my insides shrinking more and more with each accusation they made, and I hoped upon hope that they would eventually just make me so small I would disappear altogether.

What was worse is that I knew what they were saying was true. I had done everything they said I had. I closed my eyes and tried to pretend like it wasn’t going on. I hummed every song I had learned as a small child to try to tune them out. Humming soon turned to singing and singing soon turned to shouting as their voices carried past my own.

Suddenly I was the only voice in the room. I slowly opened my eyes, hoping that I would somehow find an empty room before me, back in my own bedroom, that it had all just been a horrible dream and I had finally woken up. Instead I found a man in a white floor-length robe standing before me. I was startled. What would he have to say?

His face wasn’t scrunched up like the other men’s though. His fists weren’t clenched. I couldn’t help but stare into his eyes. They seemed to smile at me instead of shooting looks of death my way. Maybe he will be nice to me, give me a chance to be someone new, a chance to be the person I want to be, but never seem to be able to stay. My glance was finally broken when one of the men in the crowd spoke up, providing every dirty detail of what I had done. I couldn’t believe his memory.

“Listen to what she has done,” roared a voice from the back of the crowd, “We ought to stone her to death for it.”

I knew that was the end of the soft eyes the man in the white robe would ever give me. I was glad he had turned the other way in order to look at the man telling him what I had done. I held my hands up to my ears to block out the harsh words I knew he would have to say about me. I just couldn’t bare the thought that my chance for him to see me differently was over so quickly.

He grabbed a sheet of paper off of the desk before him and bent over it furiously scribbling with a pen. I stretched to see what he was writing, but so did the rest of the crowd, so all I could see was blue ink filling the entire page. The silent faces of each of the men grew long as they clearly read whatever he was writing down. When he filled the front page, he stood back up straight and said, “Who hear is without fault? Let him be the first one to throw a stone her direction.” The men stood silent as they listened to his radical words. He took the sheet back before him, turned it over, and began writing again. When that side was also finished, he slid the paper back to the other side of the table. One by one the men left the circle. There was no one left in the room but me and the man in the white robe.

He set his pen on the table, turned to me, looking intently into my eyes with the same glistening look the screaming man had broken before, and gently asked me, “Who is going to point out your faults now?”

“There is no one left,” I stated, shocked as I looked around the empty room.

“And I also will not. Leave now and do not return to what you were doing before.”

Of Five Dollar Bills and Tasty Meals

I stand amazed at a disturbing trend overtaking my homeland. A trend I willingly and lustfully partake in, daily.

Yesterday I spent the morning at Starbucks, a glorious place filled with delightful beverages wielding the power to turn your frazzled morning into a spiritual experience. The creators of Starbucks, whomever they are, were not a single IQ point away from being declared sheer geniuses. After all, who can, upon entering these franchises with the best of intentions of frugality, resist the titillating aromas of freshly roasted, brewing coffee wafting throughout the classic coffee shop décor, offering both peace and tranquility at no small price, to the formerly monetary minded patron? As if this scene were not enough to entice one to all-together turn over one’s wallet in exchange for a Venti cup of a six-worded beverage, the unquestioning perkiness of the Baristas surely does the trick. There is not a coffee purchaser yet who has left anything short of a friend to a Barista… Yes, Starbucks is a delightful place.

But, after several minutes of sitting and sipping my five dollar beverage of delight yesterday morning, and fully basking in all that Starbucks has come to offer me, it hit me: how many children in the world will not know what their next meal tastes like because I chose to spend my excess on my own luxury rather than on meeting the immediate needs of those most desperate for it?

Reading a book, “Radical,” by David Platt, I received my answer all too soon: five children to be exact. According to the statistics found in Platt’s book, over one billion people a day live on a measly dollar a day, and two billion more live on only two dollars a day (108). What a sobering truth.

When I stop to consider how well I know the Starbucks menu by heart, I can no longer help but imagine the desperate, helpless faces of those men, women, and children unable to survive on a dollar a day… not because they were not good stewards of the meager amount available to them, rationing and portioning, sharing amongst their shrinking families. But, due only to my own selfishness and ignorance, have shirked my responsibilities to godly stewardship.

Second Corinthians 9:8 speaks so clearly of this concept, “And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work.” God has not lavished his grace upon us in order that we might solely bask in the abundance that he blesses us with. That concept makes us the object of worship! What a dangerous concept for us to find ourselves embracing!

No, he has lavished us with such grace that we may turn around and lavish others with that same grace in the generous supply he has abounded to us in our own lives.

I find my heart questioning the significance of the luxury that Starbucks has come to represent in this article in my own life, not because Starbucks is in and of itself a wretched place of debauchery, but because somewhere there is a little girl crying out for a meal that I have the funds to provide. Will I really choose to live a lifestyle that is characterized by a five-dollar-beverage addiction when I have been given the grace to abound five-days of sustenance for her? Five more days of a chance for her to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ? Oh, how my prayer is that I won’t! …that we won’t.

Boxed Emotion

rejected memories rest
on my dressing table
hidden in a hand-me-down keds box


stationary bleached with tears
photographs torn
solitary dehydrated yellow rose


walking away as if the first time
fantastical dreams returned
one tear sluices a spellbound emotion


releasing the truth
admitting my fate
consumed and discarded


i am a forgotten valentine

Haggai 2:23

Standing in a line
transported back to recess
pigtails disheveled; heart disillusioned
my eyes on the best of the group
hearing their names called aloud
Mike…
Beth…
Jim…
my heart sinks
will I be called last?
Will I be left standing alone?
I hear a familiar voice
His eyes focused on me
I have been chosen
He wants me for His very own
I am His
His alone.

My Invitation

When I don't ask because I'm afraid to hear what you'll say...

When I am satisfied with knowledge and just walk away...

When I spend the day artificially trying to hide...

When once again Your Truth is drowned out by a lie...

...It's then that I hear You loud and clear

"Come deeper."

"Come deeper."

"Just rest in knowing I AM is here."

Milkshake, oh milkshake

Milkshake, oh milkshake
In your glass all frosty and cold…

Milkshake, oh milkshake
Your statement is bold.

Milkshake, oh milkshake
Please give me a clue.

Milkshake, oh milkshake
Why does a clear identity elude you?

Milkshake, oh milkshake
Are you a beverage or an ice cream?

Milkshake, oh milkshake
You really need to pick a team.

Milkshake, oh milkshake
Riding the fence, you will surely loose

Milkshake, oh milkshake
Whose allegiance do you choose?

Your Very Own Bed Sheets

Yesterday I kept a promise. I deeply wish that I could tell you that I kept my promise because I was overwhelmed with a love and passion that could not keep me away from fulfilling my vow, but sooner or later Truth would rat me out and you would discover that I mostly kept my promise out of pride. I made a commitment to be somewhere, and I would certainly rise to the occasion, lest someone find my obliged word questionable. Pride. So what was this promise I felt so inclined to keep? A few weeks ago I was asked to join my church for a morning of feeding the homeless at a local shelter, and yesterday was that day.

Too intimidated to go alone, I shanghaied a friend into going with me. We pulled into the parking lot and immediately faced the decision to take the easy route and claim there wasn’t a parking spot to behold and feigning disappointment later in the day, or deciding to stay. As one homeless man approached the rear of our car to move a parking cone for us, I, for but a brief moment, made eye contact with somebody’s need. It was not his need for pancakes that I was face to face with at that moment, but the need for genuine love. We stayed.

Walking into the gated parking lot, dressing down in last year’s J.Crew from head to toe, all which was within me wanted to leave. We got put to work at the clothing station. Hey, a girl’s gotta use her strengths, right? At first, I busied myself with the organization of the clothes… shirts here, pants there, large, medium, small… nothing to it, just like my closet at home. Until it wasn’t anymore.

I picked up a large maroon piece of cloth I originally thought was an oversized dress shirt. It turns out that it was at the very bottom of the pile of clothes, so it took quite a bit of tugging to release it from the stack. Once I got it out, however, I realized my initial impression was actually quite wrong. It wasn’t an oversized dress shirt; it was a bed sheet. I am ashamed to admit that the first two thoughts that ran through my head upon fully gazing at this bed covering were: “This is possibly the ugliest set of sheets I have ever seen,” and soon followed by “If you are homeless, why do you need a set of sheets to begin with?” That’s when I met her.

I’m not sure what her name is (I now regret not having the forethought to ask her when I had the chance), but the words she spoke have forever changed my perspective on monetary purchases. As she was rummaging through the stack of clothes, and approaching the bottom where I had re-stashed the unnecessary hideous sheet set, she quickly placed her bags on the ground in order to free both hands to delicately pick up the maroon monstrosity. I couldn’t take my eyes off of her inability to take her eyes off of the sheets.

She held them in her left hand and gently whisked her right hand across the top of the worn cloth as if it was a newborn grandchild’s precious cheek. After taking a second for contemplation, she extended the sheets towards her friend, who also paused in her tracks upon realizing what was before her: bed sheets. “Imagine that… having your very own bed sheets. And, such a beautiful set at that.”

She delicately ran her fingertips over the top layer of the gorgeous fabric as she and her friend both sighed in unison, and then gently lowered them back to the table. I, ignorantly, reminded her that she was free to take them if she wanted. She, now making eye contact with my point of need… humility… smiled and stated these everlasting words: “Oh, honey, now that would require that I had a bed to put them on, wouldn’t it?” Writing that sentence, I fear it may be taken in the cynical voice with which I naturally read things so often. Let me be overly clear here that her intention was far from cynicism, or even pity for that matter. Her statement was but a shear representation of the truth: she had no bed, so therefore she also had no need for a set of bed sheets, however soft and beautiful they may have been.

She had no bed? I have two! and goodness knows how many sets of sheets for both of them. How many times have I complained that the sets I have are not made of Egyptian cotton, a high enough thread count, or just simply have been shelved for years on account of their hideous clash with my updated décor? Somehow I can now envision that worn maroon cloth matching everything I own, and I own nothing maroon.

When did it become okay in mind for me to spend a three-digit number on a single pair of jeans? To own six black pairs of shoes… and still believe I have no appropriate footwear for the day? When exactly was it that I lost touch with reality? At what point did money offer to be my god and I willingly bowed down to it? I cannot answer any of these questions, but I can give you a clear answer to this: When did I decide that Money had to be dethroned in my heart? Yesterday at 10 AM, while holding a set of maroon sheets.