A Perfectly Good Reason

PRAYER FOR THE WEEK

Jesus, help me not to make excuses for my mistakes. Amen!


A PERFECTLY GOOD REASON

The people who didn’t like Jesus tried to trick Him into saying something against the law. They brought a woman who was caught sinning and said, “The law says we should kill her. What do you think?” But Jesus just said, “Whoever has never sinned themselves should throw the first stone at her.” The people felt ashamed and left. Jesus told the woman, “Go home, and don’t sin any more.”

The first thing a lot of kids do when they’re about to get in trouble is to look for an excuse for what they did. For anyone else, what you did would be wrong; for you, there’s a perfectly good reason for the mistake!

Jesus didn’t buy that, any more than your parents do. In this week’s Gospel (John 8:1-11), some people try to fool Him into punishing a woman, but He’s quick to point out that they make mistakes, too, and don’t expect to get in trouble.

When you’ve done something wrong, you might panic. You know that adults will ask you why you did it. If you come up with a good excuse, you might not get in trouble.

Imagine how scared the woman in the Gospel story must have been! She had done something that people thought of as so bad, they wanted to kill her for it — and she had no excuse. All she could do was wait for Jesus to decide how to punish her.

It’s a good thing all grownups were kids once. Even when they’re frustrated with you, most of them try to be fair in punishing you. They remember making the same mistakes when they were kids.

That’s what Jesus told the people: If they thought they were so perfect that they could kill someone for making a mistake — even a bad one — then their own mistakes could be punished, too.

The most important part of the story is about forgiveness and starting over. Even if you squirm out of trouble with an excuse, you still did something wrong and need forgiveness from God and anyone you hurt. Then you can try not to make the same mistake again. That was Jesus’ advice!