Risen

I love Easter. Chocolate, bunnies, . . . chocolate bunnies . . . and overall hoppiness. Family photos, suits and dresses. A cross and a tomb. . .

I was about to say "life and death," but I realized that's backwards from God. He usually works that way.

But we see a certain order of things: We live and then we die.

In reality, we start dying at birth. Our bodies grow and then decay, but all the time we stay on this rotting planet. Until we finally die . . . and then we start to live! Like, I seriously can NOT wait for Heaven, ya'll! I mean, I don't plan to kill myself, but I also don't wanna stay on this Earth any longer than I have to.

Some people think I'm morbid when I say that, but all I want to do is stop dying and start living! I'm tired of being sick and weak, both physically and emotionally. Tired of being hurt, tired of having to try so hard, every day, to live the way I am meant to.

I'm stinkin' tired!

I think Mary Magdalene got tired too.

Can you imagine how exhaustingly hopeless it must be to be nothing but a shell holding seven demons? To be ignored and looked down on, completely avoided. To just want to feel better. To be unable to fix yourself?

I feel that all the time. I'm not possessed, and I'm not really ostracized, but sometimes I feel like just a shell holding my ridiculous emotions and sad mind. And I can't fix it and I can't just feel better.

But Jesus healed Mary. And she followed Him everywhere.

She listened to Him. She worshiped Him.

 And He died! The one thing in her life that had power, the one person she trusted completely. . . He left her. What would happen? Would the demons come back? Would she return to the worthless shell she had been before? She was already looked down on- she couldn't be trusted because she was a woman. But at least she was free inside.

But now Jesus was gone- death had claimed Him and He would never come back. She could never ask all the questions she still didn't have answers to; never again tell Him she loved Him. He had broken her trust by leaving, and she couldn't even tell Him because He was dead. Dead!

So as soon as Sabbath was over she went to Him. She brought the best of her spices and preparations, to do one last thing for the man who had healed her. She went to grieve, and was met with horror.

Someone had taken the body of her Lord!

She ran for help, and when Peter and John had no answers, she collapsed and wept. Angels spoke to her, but that didn't matter in the face of her bitter hurt and grief.

Nothing was right; everything was upside-down. It had been all wrong before, but this was unthinkably tangled up. And then. . .

"Mary."

And she realized that it was true- Jesus is God.

At the moment when all hope is absolutely and utterly obliterated. Jesus lives.

He lives, you guys!

And instead of trying to survive here on this little rock, waiting for, and dreading, the day that everything's over . . . We. Can. Live!

That's what I wanted to say this Easter.

~Dolly