Anxious Moments

The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought 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?’  . . . 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, ‘Let any one of you who is without sin 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 at a time. . . 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.   John 8:3-11 

When I read this passage, I sense several anxious moments.  A crowd gathered with the purpose of judging a woman and to have her stoned for committing adultery.  I sense the woman’s anxiety.  I sense the crowd’s anxiety.  Amid that anxiety, Jesus simply bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground.  That act probably baffled the crowd; not what they were expecting.  Whatever Jesus wrote has remained a mystery.  What we do know is that everyone but the woman – and of course Jesus – left.

In his book Scribbling in the Sand, author and musician Michael Card describes this scene.  Card writes:

What Jesus did that morning created a space in time that allowed the angry mob to first cool down, then to hear his word, and finally to think about it, be convicted by it and respond — or not.  It made time stand still.  It was original.  It was unexpected.  It was a response to the noise and confusion and busyness all around him, yet it was not in the least tainted by the noise.  Instead, Jesus’ action created a frame around the silence — the kind of silence in which God speaks to the heart.  In short, it was a supreme act of creativity.  It was art.  (Scribbling in the Sand, InterVarsity Press, copyright 2002, at p. 16).      

We live in extremely anxious times. COVID-19, economic stress, and racial strife are all around us.  Responses amid these anxious times vary.  T .S. Elliot is quoted as saying, “anxiety is the hand maiden of creativity.”  I know this to be true because some of my own poems were born out of anxious moments.  Throughout history, God has spoken to us through art.  As Card puts it, “This is art through which God is seen and heard, in which he is incarnate, is ‘fleshed out’ in paint and ink, in stone, in creative movement.”  (Scribbling in the Sand, at p. 17). 

How do you respond to anxiety?  How do you handle all the “noise and confusion”?  Perhaps you find yourself writing, painting, composing or dancing!  These are indeed anxious times.  Perhaps it is that “space in time” that fosters the best creative moments.  I would add that when creativity is used to honor God, it is indeed worship of the highest order.