Daily Affirmations - Day 1- Now What Do You Say? - Tagged With Love

This week's Theme: Now What Do You Say?

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Day 1: Tagged with love

Two or three years ago my friend sent me a short paragraph of descriptive text. The text, from our high school yearbook, was supposed to be a description of my friend—her characteristics and her capabilities. We both laughed, amused, and somewhat perplexed at how far from accurate the assessment seemed.

Later, I wondered about the decades-old write-up. Was it truly a snapshot of the way things were then? Are we simply looking back through lenses that have been cleaned and polished by growth and maturity? Or could it be the reverse—that the filters applied then were too streaked with youth and immaturity to be wise, and fair, and accurate?

I lean towards the latter belief, but perhaps the truth includes some combination of both. Regardless, it is a special blessing to have journeyed through life with many who have been with us through our best and our worst— those who have known us “when”— those with whom we have celebrated victories and conquests; who have seen the evidence of our best self, but who have also exchanged with us grace for times, periods, and stints of blunders and mistakes, missteps and folly.

The little visit I took with my friend into the past reminded me that our knowledge and our impressions are often mere snapshots in time, and that often we are not equipped to judge and to assess across the full spectrum of light, growth, vision and perspective. I am reminded that the Judge of all the earth alone knows all that is needed to do right (Genesis 18:25).

And I am awed at the wise and wonderful way— firmly, civilly, precisely, and authoritatively— that Jesus makes this point to the teachers of the law and the Pharisees [who] brought in a woman caught in adultery (John 8:3). The picture was clear to them— a snapshot in real time, the unmistakable tags of “adulteress,” “such women,” “condemned”, and more tags— up to the full complement— glaringly obvious in the harsh light of Mosaic Law.

Strong in their stance on the Law, the religious leaders made their appeal to its authority. “In the Law Moses commanded …” they triumphantly declared, issuing Jesus the challenge to defy or contradict what was to them the ultimate authority— Now what do You say? (John 8:5).

But the One who had given the Law, the One who alone knows every human heart (1 Kings 8:39), dared them to retrieve their own discomfiting, time-stamped, fully-tagged images, as He unflinchingly issued His supreme counter challenge, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her” (John 8:7).

In the end, the question, Now what do You say? (John 8:5) was answered only for the woman: 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” (John 8:10-11).

I am glad my friend and I could laugh together in the recognition that words written in the carelessness and inexperience of youth are completely without relevance without meaning, without significance, and without merit in our current frame. But we have the benefit of time and history to prove it.

It is in the constant stream and the immediacy of the world’s "snaps" that we may be tempted to accept as fact the disparaging, discouraging, and dispiriting tags that are constantly created, assigned, posted, shared.

But ultimately, it is still only the message of truth that counts— a timeless message with tags like "precious" (Isaiah 43:4, 1 Peter 2:4-5) "treasured" (Deuteronomy 7:6), "beloved" (Colossians 3:12 - ESV), "majestic ones" (Psalm 16:3 - Legacy Standard Bible). We have been tagged with love— an inexhaustible supply of validations and affirmations from a God of immeasurable love and boundless grace. We need ask only Him, "Now what do You say?"