Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples,
"I have seen the Lord,"
and then reported what he told her.
Thanks to Mary Magdalene we know that the LORD is truly risen. Yet at times we still feel his absence just as acutely as she felt it before Jesus revealed himself to her.
And they said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping?"
She said to them, "They have taken my Lord,
and I don't know where they laid him."
Her sorrow is not because the LORD is actually gone, it is because he seems gone to her. We too experience this apparent absence in spite of the presence of the LORD. Their are times when circumstances seem to say that the LORD is not in control. There are things that happen that make us wonder where God is. Even in prayer we don't always experience the presence of the LORD. At such times we must not surrender our desire for the LORD even if it is at those times a painful desire to hold.
She thought it was the gardener and said to him,
"Sir, if you carried him away,
tell me where you laid him,
We must persist even in tears as does Mary Magdalene. We must seek him whom our hearts love as does the bride in the Song of Songs. Even if we seek him without finding him we must keep seeking. Eventually the bridegroom will be revealed.
Jesus said to her, "Mary!"
She turned and said to him in Hebrew,
"Rabbouni," which means Teacher.
We do we have to experience all of this dying, this pain and this sorrow? We experience and enter into the death of Jesus so that we might truly live as new creations. The old flesh is put to death. Because of our holy desire we hold on even as we experience the dying of Christ in our own lives so that he can manifest his life in us as well.
The love of Christ impels us,
once we have come to the conviction that one died for all;
therefore, all have died.
God uses our desires for him to purify us. Tears are often a part of the process. But let's hold fast. The bridegroom is coming soon.
O God, you are my God whom I seek;
for you my flesh pines and my soul thirsts
like the earth, parched, lifeless and without water.
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