Among the Watering Places with Liz

Jesus crouched right down in the dirt with the woman taken in adultery.  In marked contrast, the accusing Pharisees stood aloof.  Jesus lowered Himself to be in her space, her medium, and His closeness made the place pure and holy.  Though much is often made of what He may have written, this is not the point to the author, who does not even record whether He wrote words, sentences or was just doodling. Jesus refused to identify with the accusers, the chief of whom is the Satan; that  is the point.   The story ends with the woman being released, delivered, set free to go into a new space of 'sinning no more.'  What might that 'new space' have looked like from the woman's viewpoint, her lover's, her husband's, or her neighbours'? Surely the woman must have made it her mission to discover what that 'new space' would look like from the perspective of the One who saved her.  When the Lord enters our space, He changes not only our present circumsta...

 "[William] Booth believed in practical Christianity.  He was sometimes criticized for it...Booth also had a passion for souls but he could never forget the needs of bodies...He wrote:      It seems to me that we must supply the friendless with a friend, the broken in heart with comfort, the dazed, bewildered creatures with a guide, the momentarily maddened slaves of folly with thoughts and hopes that will steady them, and above all to lead them to the arms of Him who is still saying, "Come unto Me..."      In 1903, Booth wrote:     What the poor, the fallen, and the prodigal and the backslider and the hopeless crowds around us need is help - practical help - without delay.  We must not only remember them and pray for them, and talk about them - we must go to them in their miseries and deliver them."   Barbara Bolton, Booth's Drum.       Here's the question.  Has anything changed since Booth's day to p...