Today’s readings: Click on today’s date at http://www.usccb.org/bible/
Mistaken identity
Tuesday, April 7, 2015
Tuesday of the First Week of Easter
John 20:11-13
Mary Magdalene stayed outside the tomb weeping. And as she wept, she bent over into the tomb and saw two angels in white sitting there, one at the head and one at the feet where the body of Jesus had been. And they said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?”
As I get older my eyes leak more. Allergies, maybe. Or emotions. My eyes water at the most inappropriate times. Dad was the same way; I think he cried more in the last ten years of his life than the seventy before. Why is that? Why are we weeping?
Mary was sad because she had lost her best friend. The hope and dreams Jesus brought with him seemed gone and she was overwhelmed. Her own hope and dreams went with him. Nothing seemed able to change that. But she was wrong.
Grief is at worst bittersweet when we still know hope. There will be a new day, someday. Heaven is for real, and it’s coming. I am not alone, no matter how I feel right now. These sound like bumper sticker clichés, and they are when we try to paste them on the backs of others.
But when I tell myself these things, I sense their truth. Where do my tears come from? Almost always, I think, they come from hope, even when the moment is black with despair. The hope is deeper.
I am very grateful to have more of these experiences as I get older. Paul wrote to the Philippians, “To live is Christ and to die is gain.” He felt torn between heaven and earth, and I think I do too.
The moments come in movies, in stories I hear or read, in what I see just walking around my life – and these are moments of wonder, of deep calling out to deep. They come in the midst of sobbing, sometimes, as Mary sobbed. Always, however they come, when I look closely enough there is an angel sitting there, and the angel is perplexed. “Why are you weeping?”
I speak my thoughts, and my fears, and perhaps the angel might speak, or perhaps not. But always, then when I turn around I see Jesus there. I may not know it’s Jesus, but it is. Not the gardener. That’s Jesus.
Lord, you tell us over and over in all kinds of ways, “You die to live.” And then our old Adam breathes its last and we are reborn with you. Of course we can do this, when you stand beside us, and stand us up and hold us, and whisper in our ears, “You are mine.” Then we will know you from the inside out, and ourselves too.
http://www.christiancounselingservice.com/archived_devotions.php?article_id=1383
