The Bungee Cord 10-21-25

Hello,

In a world that would turn us to hopelessness, I hope that the Bungee Cord brings you hope on which you can firmly set your feet.

This week, I saw something that was hope crushing. I turned on the news and there was a report on the cease fire that is teetering in the Mid-East. As part of this report, and maybe you saw it, too, there was a half-dozen men on their knees with blindfolds on, and behind each of them was a man with a masked face pointing a gun at each of the kneeling men’s heads. The news anchor stopped the video and said that if the video was to continue, we would see each of the guns fired and each of the kneeling men fall face-down on the ground.

When I saw this, I literally gasped. How could anyone do such a thing? The amount of hatred in the shooters’ hearts is unfathomable to me. Or maybe it wasn’t hatred. Maybe it was complete lack of seeing any humanity in those who were kneeling? Maybe those shooters looked at those kneeling and saw them as less than cockroaches.

You may recall the time in the Bible when a bunch of men brought a woman caught in adultery to Jesus. (I wonder where the man was who was likewise caught in the act.). Those who caught the woman expected Jesus to condemn her and lead the accusers in pelting her with stones until she died. After all, that was the rule.

But Jesus did not do as they had hoped. When Jesus saw her, he did not see her as those men did. He did not see someone whose deed had transformed her into something less than a cockroach. Jesus saw a person kneeling in front of him, someone that God almighty held in such value that God sent Jesus, his Son, so that she might be held in the love of God every day of her life, and every day when her days in this life were to be no more. The Bible doesn’t say that Jesus looked upon her and loved her, but his response to her indictment was unmistakably one of divine love. “Let the one who has no sin throw the first stone,” Jesus said.

No one picked up a stone. When her accusers left with their tails between their legs, and maybe their eyes opened to the common humanity they held with that woman, a humanity that is stained with pain, Jesus said to her, “Go and sin no more.” Jesus words to that woman were an invitation of grace, the same invitation of grace that might be said to a rabbit caught in a trap, “You are free. Go, and hop away.”

By this treatment of that woman, Jesus would have us know that God treats us in the same way. Even though we, like that woman, do things that bring pain to others and ourselves, God does not see us by the evil we do. No, God sees us by the grace in his heart, grace that leads God to name us God’s children, children that God would give God’s own life for….which God did!

And if we listen carefully, we might hear God’s voice speak upon those who we encounter that carry an indictment that begins to well up hatred and demean in our hearts….that we might hear God say, “I died for this one, a child of mine, too.” And with that whisper in our ears, instead of gathering up stones to throw, we can reach out our hands in mercy and help others to their feet.

Is there hope for the world? Is there hope for you or me? Indeed! There is great hope, hope that is found in you and me, as Christ opens the traps this world has set for us and in which we have been caught, and he says, taking hold of our hands, “I hear lots of people caught in traps and crying for help. Let’s go and open up those traps!”

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger