Grace happens

I was leading a Bible study, a few years ago, for people who were new to Christianity and church. There were about seven or eight people there. We were going through the book of John. On that particular night, John chapter eight was what we were to read. This is the chapter about the woman caught in adultery.


And according to my custom, I ask if someone would like to read. A woman named D. said that she would. She starts reading out loud and when she reads how the people brought this woman caught in adultery to Jesus, D. begins to cry. She is frantically trying to hold back the tears as she struggles to read.

Needless to say, it was getting quite awkward in the room, but I have learned that these moments, though rare, are the workings of God in the lives of people. She continues to read and completely breaks down at the part where they say that this woman should be killed. She is sobbing as she reads how Jesus writes on the ground.

At this point I stop her and ask her if she would like someone else to finish. She looks up at me, with a tear stained face, and says, “No, I want to read. I have got to know how this ends.” And D. reads Jesus’ statement, “Neither do I condemn you, go your way. From now on sin no more.” And there on her face was the look. The look of someone forgiven.

I can, to this day, only imagine what was going on in D.’s mind, heart, and soul. Whether sometime in her past she was that woman, or she just identified with the embarrassment or the humiliation, I do not know. I don’t care. What I do know is this. In a little Bible study, sitting in a chair across from me, a person experienced the great feeling of grace. No, on second thought, she experienced the “presence” of grace. On that day “Grace came down”.