The Second Look

The One everyone came to see that first Sunday after the cross of Good Friday was nowhere to  be found.  Certainly, He was not where He was supposed to be.  He was not lying silently and still in the darkness of the tomb.  Peter and John could not find Him when they arrived.  Mary Magdalene made one trip and then another and all she had to show for her morning exertion was her heavy tears.  On the second trip she saw two angels in the tomb which should have been a clue that something extraordinary was afoot, but she was too blinded by her tears and her grief to see.     

It might also be said she was even more blinded by her expectations.  The body she expected to find was nowhere to be found and if she remembered Jesus saying anything about being raised from the dead, it was surely outside her consciousness that early morning.  We know about expectations.  There are times and places we expect Jesus to be present and when He seems like One who is nowhere to be found, we find our own eyes shut to some moment of outside the box revealing.  

As He came to Mary in that early morning hour, so does He often come to us with our name on His heart as it is spoken by the Spirit to the deep place of abiding presence within us.  From the language of the story, it appears that it was only at the second look after hearing her name that she knew Who was with her.  We sometimes forget how persistent Jesus can be in making Himself known to us.  It is not His absence that keeps us from seeing, but eyes that are closed to everything but what we expect to see.