The darkness has no power over Light.
Every end is a birthing room for God’s new beginning.
Please receive the blessing of these words and thoughts from Jan Richardson.
Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark,
Mary Magdalene came to the tomb.
– John 20:1
While it was still dark.
While it was still night.
While she could not see.
While she thought death held sway.
While she grieved.
While she wept.
While it was still dark, resurrection began.
This is the place we have journeyed toward all these weeks, the destination we have been bound for all these days – more than forty now, if you count the Sundays. I am partial to John’s telling of the story of Easter morning, and of what happens between Mary Magdalene and Jesus here at the garden tomb – how at the sound of her name, Mary’s weeping gives way to seeing, to recognition, to the astounding joy of resurrection.
I would want to linger here, to stay and savor this miracle of reunion and return. But we know that Jesus asks something other of Mary Magdalene. Though this may be a garden, this is not a place to put down roots. It is a place of calling, of consecration, of sending as Jesus urges the Magdalene to go and tell what she has seen.
Mary has to choose whether she wants this calling, this consecration; she has to decide whether she truly wants to be sent from this place. I feel a catch in my own chest in this moment of decision, this threshold that will change everything from here.
This day, this empty tomb: this has been our destination all this time. But we see, with Mary Magdalene, that this is not a place to stop. This is not the end toward which we have been traveling.
This is the beginning.
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Thankful for you and the journey of God’s new.
Easter blessings,
Dena
If you would like to view past editions of Grace for the Journey, follow this link: https://fairwaydistrictnc.org/category/from-the-ds/