Hello, all! I hope everyone is having a wonderful Wednesday! I don’t think I’ve shared any of my fiction on my blog before, but I couldn’t help sitting down and attempting some good old-fashioned creative writing this afternoon…and, for better or worse (comments and criticism are welcome!), I thought I’d post it!
I listened to a sermon on “The Woman Caught in Adultery” preached recently by Damon Thompson (check out the Ramp), and I guess you could say it inspired me ;-). Anywho, this is “part one” of my literary rendition; I hope you enjoy it. Oh, please remember I’ve taken artistic license with the details of this story, which is just eleven verses in John’s gospel.
Stay fit, stay faithful ~<3 Di
I Am Not Condemned-Part I
by Diana Anderson-Tyler
“…the scribes and Pharisees brought to Him a woman caught in adultery. And when they had set her in the midst, they said to Him, ‘Teacher, this woman was caught in adultery, in the very act. Now Moses, in the law, commanded us that such should be stoned. But what do You say? …’” (John 8:3-5)
I lay in my husband’s bed beside the other man…beside a scoundrel, traitor, a wretched adulterer like me. Awake on my side with his arm draped heavily, oppressively over my naked hip, I stared at the soft white cloud of dawn illuminating the filthy clay beneath the door. In just a few moments I would rise and clothe myself, sweep the dirt from the doorway, and let the light filter into a house worthy of its presence.
“In there! This is the one!”
The shadows of men’s footsteps obscured the light. The bellowing voice chased away the peace I’d found in that solitary patch of morning. The room was dark again, but only for an instant…
Suddenly, the door burst open; the ensuing streams of light gripped me like shackles. The man beside me stirred and slid his sweaty palm off my body.
“Get up, you fool. We’re going to the temple.” The gruff voice came from Matthias, a prominent old Pharisee whose pride I could almost see swelling inside his chest as he spoke. He was flanked on both sides by his wide-eyed protégés whose agape reaction at my unclothed figure belied their devotion to the Law.
The man beside me jumped from the bed, dragging me after him. I snatched my tunic from the table, where our desires once were sated, and clung to it like Eve to her fig leaf.
“Where are we going?! What have you done?!”
Not a word from my lover. He didn’t dare turn to face me, his scorned prisoner, as he followed the pack of wolves to their festering den of schemes and ridicule.
I could feel my pulse quickening inside my wrists as he squeezed them unrelentingly. In spite of my shame, now buffeting me with waves of nausea, I willed myself to look up towards the morning star. I fixed my eyes upon it and held them there until we reached the Shushan gate.
How gentle is the making of a new day, much like the peculiar calm before the tempests strike the Galilee; much like the silence that falls just before a judgment is pronounced…
