Rap Sheet

Luke 8:1-3

Phrases that spoke to me today:
• proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God
• healed of evil spirits and infirmities
• from whom seven demons had gone out
• provided for them out of their means

Applying the Word to My Life:
Early in my career I did criminal defense work. Some of my clients had records that were pretty thick — a lot of prior charges, some of them serious. Whatever they'd done before, my job on any given case was the same: make sure their rights were protected and the process was fair. A prior conviction wasn't proof they'd done something wrong this time, and it usually wasn't admissible as evidence either — past bad acts don't get to decide today's case.

But it wasn't exactly a secret. The judge could see it in the system. The prosecution already knew. It sat there in the room whether anyone said it out loud or not — the only real question was whether I'd be the one to name it, or whether we'd all just quietly work around it.

I almost always named it myself. Not because it changed what anyone already knew, but because of what staying quiet about it would've said. When someone hides where they've been, it suggests, even quietly, that the past still has some hold on them — that it's a thing to be managed, kept out of the room. When someone's willing to just say it plainly, unprompted, it usually means the opposite: that the history doesn't own them anymore. Telling it straight is often the first sign a person's actually moved past something, that they're free to be exactly where they are now instead of still defending where they used to be.

Luke does the same thing with one of the women in this group: Mary, called Magdalene. Before we hear one word about her faithfulness, before we ever see her provide for Jesus out of her own resources, Luke tells us the one thing that would've made the least flattering headline: seven demons had come out of her. He doesn't wait for someone else to bring that up later, and he doesn't bury it until she's proven herself in the story. It's the first thing we're told about her.

That's not a slip in the narrative — it's the same thing I saw in the clients who were willing to let me tell their past first. Mary's history is stated flat, nothing softened, nothing hidden, and then, with no transition needed, she's already following, already giving what she has to support a ministry that isn't even in trouble yet. She wasn't managing an image anymore. She was just present, exactly as she was, doing what was in front of her to do.

The same is true for us. The past is just our résumé, not our destiny.

My Response for Today:
Find where I'm still managing part of my own story, and let it just be true instead.