Woman, where are your accusers?

From a journal entry in 2006, adapted.

I had a conversation with a friend the other day about prostitutes...

My friend, Ashley had a conversation with another of our dear friends, Heather and had disagreed quite passionately with her... Ashley had been speaking to her brother who apparently has been propositioned by a prostitute on a few occasions, living in the inner city as he does. Her brother told her that any time he saw a prostitute, he would call the police on them for solicitation. The friend and her brother then discussed how wrong it is to be a prostitute; how the Bible speaks against it. How it is sin and God hates it. In her retelling, she was very passionately, "righteously" angry.

Heather disagreed with her. So did I.

As my dear friend Ashley was explaining this heated discussion to me, I did not respond. I could not. Emotions rolled across me as the waves of a stormy sea. First anger, then righteous indignation, and finally a deep, heart-wrenching sadness. For I realized that she did not understand.

"Woman, where are your accusers?"

They're gone, Lord...

"Then neither do I condemn you..."

I spoke quietly as she ended her rant against sin
"I guess I just see past the sin to the person. Think of how much pain and humiliation a girl must have endured to think that this is her only way to make money." My friend had no response.

Later, as I sat pondering this conversation, I cried.

Oh Lord, am I wrong?

And I felt, as sure as I am living and breathing, the still small voice of God in my heart.

No Beloved, this is what amazing grace is.

You see, dear friends, this is what the Lord does for us .We are not merely a scarlet letter in His eyes.
He is just, but chooses, because of His Son, to look past the sin, the guilt, and the shame and see the person- the special creation whose inmost being was in His Divine imaginings ages before we ever came to be...
The beloved child, lost and longing to be found. He looks at us with love and acceptance, never asking for more than our trust. This is amazing grace.

I long so deeply, more deeply than I long for anything in my existence to show those hurting children, sons and daughters of the King, that their Daddy loves them.

To that prostitute on the street corner, tough on the outside, but dying on the inside....

Your Father loves you... there is freedom for you.

I want to bring them living water and freedom from sin and death. Not another prison cell.


Oh that He might use me in such a capacity. This is my Divine purpose. This is my call.



The call still calls.......... I could have never imagined the call on my life at this time.... Jesus you have branded me from birth for this purpose.
I am Yours.