“Then each went to his own home. But Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. At dawn He appeared again in the temple courts; where all the people gathered around Him, and He sat down to teach them. The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman who had been caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, ’Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery.’ ” – John 7:53; 8:1-4.

Can you imagine how that woman must have felt?

Let me rewind a little. How do you suppose this woman was feeling before she was caught? Can you relate to that? I can. I have participated in an activity which I knew was completely wrong. I can relate to feeling so bad about what I was doing that I hated myself. I can relate to doing things in secret and trying to keep those I loved and respected from finding out. Dare I say–all of us can relate to those feelings. We’ve all been in a situation in which we were sinning and trying to keep it a secret. Our greatest fear is that people would find us out.

It is a feeling of suffocation. Your life becomes consumed with your sin and the focus of how to keep it in the dark. It feels hopeless and desperate. I would guess that the woman in our story probably felt that way about her life, desperate, no hope.

Now pick it up in John 8. She is caught in the act and is made to stand before the group.

Here it is–her greatest fear is playing out right before her eyes. She is standing before the people she sees at the market place each day. She sees the women in her town who taught her how to make bread and to sew when she was a child. She sees her neighbors. She is standing before all of the “good” religious people who never miss an opportunity to be in the temple.

As I said, we’ve all experienced times of knowing that we were messing up big time and trying to keep that sin a secret. But some of us can also relate to being “caught.”

My question for you today is, have you ever been caught? Have you ever found yourself in a moment in which it seemed the world stopped and looked your way? There you stood–guilty and exposed. Your secret had been found out, and as your fear subsided and shame set in, you saw the devastated, disappointed, tear-filled eyes of your mother, your father, your brother and sisters, your friends, your teachers, your neighbors, the people from your church. Have you ever been there?

In that surreal moment when your whole world stops and everyone’s head turns your way–and there is nothing to say. But in that terrible moment, something surprising happens: for the first time in a very long while, breathing deeply comes naturally. At least for that moment, the suffocation subsides and we began to breathe again. There are no more secrets. Here is the truth, in all of its ugliness; we are all staring right at the truth.

 Click here for Caught (Part 2)…

My love,