Today's church service was a heart-rendering one. The story about the adulterous women who was going to be stoned was told countless times, over and over again. We tell it to the kids in Sunday School, we discussed it during Bible Studies, we hear the pastors and preachers and evangelists preached about it all the time. The story potrays one of the most powerful demonstration of forgiveness of sins while at the same time, exhibiting the judgemental side of humans.

Humans have a great tendency to judge other people based on what they have done wrong in the past. It really doesn't matter how many good deeds you have done. If you have done a grave sin in the past, and others got wind of it, that one sin has the power to cancel all the good things you have done for others. That is probably why ex-convicts, detoxed drug addicts, ex-gamblers, ex-prostitutes etc. sometimes have a hard time fitting in into society. People always like to look the worst in us and judge us based on that.

At dawn Jesus 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 caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, "Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?" They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.

Most preachers will use this story to teach about forgiveness, equating the crowd who was about to stone the woman as everyday people like us. I've seen how bitterness, unforgiveness, anger and hatred can destroy lives, dash hopes and obliterate dreams. I've made an oath to God and to my soul a long time ago that I'll never allow any circumstances to bind me in hatred, and I still hold on to that oath today. I don't want to know what it is like to hate. I want to know what it is to be able to love unconditionally. However, today, when I hear and read that story again, I felt myself being placed in the situation of the adulterous woman for the first time.

Have you ever been in situations where you were put under the spotlight and accused for wrongs that you have done, and at that time, feeling ashamed and worthless, longed for forgiveness and pardon? Have you ever yearned for someone to tell you that "Hey..it's ok. Everybody makes mistakes. You're forgiven."? I know I was in that situation before, and I've yearned for those words.

But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, "If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her." Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground. At this, those who heard began to go away one by one, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. Jesus straightened up and asked her, "Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?" "No one, sir," she said. "Then neither do I condemn you," Jesus declared. "Go now and leave your life of sin."