The Everyday Prayer

Re:Verse passage – John 20:1-18 (day five) “Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came early to the tomb, while it was still dark, and saw the stone already taken away from the tomb.”

As we read and study this first Resurrection Appearance this week, I came across this quote/insight from Dr. Bob Utley. “Remember the stone was removed to let the eyewitnesses into the tomb, not to let Jesus out. His new resurrection body did not have the physical limits of His earthly body (i.e., John 20:19,26).”

It caused me to think/remember many of the ways and times that God uses (has used in my life) to show me Who He is, How He is working, and What He has done. Has been a sweet week of worship and reflection. It is God who shows/reveals His Character, His Ways and Purposes,and His Words and Promises to us. Maybe today, we should all inventory and recount those times where God’s goodness and activity were revealed to us by His grace and power!!

Re:Verse passage – John 20:1-18 (day four)

Occam’s Razor is a problem-solving principle that suggests the simplest explanation is usually the most accurate. Mary was using this logic when she discovered the empty tomb. Jesus had died, his body was no longer in the tomb, therefore someone had moved the body. This is a logical conclusion to draw based on the information in front of her.

But in her grief, Mary had temporarily forgotten the words of Jesus that explained these mysteries in front of her. In the Kingdom of God, basic logic works differently. In Kingdom logic, our first assumption should be that in every situation, God is at work for his glory and our good. When we’re approached with bad news, hard days, and big questions, we no longer start with determining the simplest explanation, but rather by prayerfully discerning the ways the Spirit is moving.

When Jesus calls her by name, “Mary!,” she moves from earthly logic to Kingdom possibilities. He is just as close to you and I through the power of the Spirit, and he calls our name. Which logic will you choose?

Re:Verse passage – John 20:1-18 (day three)

“They have taken away the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.”

Mary’s statement here radiates helplessness. She had grown accustomed to living as a powerless, insignificant, unnoticed person of little value in her society. That is, until Jesus saw her. For the first time in her life, she had felt what it is like to matter, to live as something other than a cipher. But now the one who had seen her was apparently gone, himself the victim of that same uncaring world which had tried to teach her that she had no worth. “They have taken him away” mourns that the world has reasserted its position as an overwhelming force that swallows hope whole. In short order, Mary would encounter Jesus and find that the world is powerless after all.

Re:Verse passage – John 20:1-18 (day two) So she ran…v. 2a; The two were running together…v. 4a

Resurrection morning had a lot of cardio for Mary, Peter, and John. It’s as much a condition of the heart spiritually as well as physically. Why run? There may have been some fear that Jesus’ body had been desecrated, removed, or destroyed, but what played through the minds of the disciples when they heard the tomb was empty? Was there some small hope that he was truly alive? There is a quickening in our spirits, externally motivated, that will lead us to run toward the truth. Only with the Holy Spirit will we look backwards and recognize what moved us, what drew us, to the appointed place to meet the Lord. They had all been with the savior and heard him speak of the reality of the cross, his death, and ultimately his resurrection. Grief, however, blinded their hearts from those promises. My hope is that each of us have spent each day near the savior, so when prompted we can run towards him and discover what truth he has yet to reveal.

Re:Verse passage – Luke 24:1-12 (day seven)

he went away to his home, marveling at what had happened. vs 12

Will you marvel today?

Will you marvel when praise fills the earth

as the sun breaks through?

When you see the flowered cross

and the empty tomb?

When sound of laughter and chatter

begins to resonate?

When the Word is opened and to you

the Spirit speaks straight?

Will you marvel when we all respond

in unison: He is Risen indeed?

 

Will you marvel tomorrow?

Will you marvel when there is no service

to point it out to you?

When you are back in the grind and just

trying to make it through?

When you find yourself at the mercy of

the tyranny of the urgent?

When the little things become big and

disciplines enter into deferment?

Will you marvel and find a way to respond

in unison: He is Risen indeed?

Re:Verse passage – Luke 24:1-12 (day six)

Then they remembered that he had said this. ⁹ So they rushed back from the tomb to tell his eleven disciples—and everyone else—what had happened.¹⁰ It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and several other women who told the apostles what had happened. Luke 24:8-10

The women at the tomb didn’t have a complete theology of resurrection. They didn’t yet grasp the fullness of what had happened. But when the angels reminded them of Jesus’ words, something clicked. They remembered. They believed. And they ran to tell the others.

Resurrection life isn’t about having all the answers. It’s about following the risen Jesus—staying close, remembering his words, and stepping out to share what we’ve seen.

Sometimes, we wait to move until we feel certain or confident. But the first resurrection witnesses didn’t wait for perfect clarity—they responded in faith. That’s the invitation for us today: to trust that Jesus is alive, to hold on to what He’s said, and to carry the hope of the empty tomb into a world still marked by death.

He is risen!.

Re:Verse passage – Luke 24:1-12 (day five)

Re:Verse passage – Luke 24:1-12 (day four)

Have you ever gotten emotional whiplash? When the events of life come at you so quickly with both bad news and good news that it’s hard to catch your breath? The women had just witnessed their Lord die a traumatic death, and in their grief they intended to do what they knew how to do – care for his body with respect and dignity. They arrive expecting to find a quiet, somber scene but instead find the tomb empty and angels in their midst! I would have passed out on the spot.

But the angels speak a word of peace to them, “remember.” The women were close enough to Jesus to have been there when he had foretold of his suffering, death, and resurrection. They were in the inner circle enough to have heard these things that they didn’t quite understand. The angels prompt them to remember that Jesus had already given them the blueprint of how things would turn out. He had already prepared them and given them everything they would need. Remembering his words filled them with hope.

We have likewise been given everything we need in this life through the witness of the Holy Spirit and the Scriptures. What words of Jesus do you need to remember? What promise has he given you for you to meditate on? Return to those words and be filled with hope.

Re:Verse passage – Luke 24:1-12 (day three)

“These words appeared to them as nonsense, and they would not believe [Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James, and the other women].”

The roil of emotion as the injurious cascade of events crashed into these believers overwhelmed them. To hear that what had hammered their souls might not be what they thought it was sounded to them perhaps as though their fellow disciples were at best trivializing these occurrences or at worst denying them. Can anything become unlost, unagonizing, or untrue? The categories of pain are fixed and unmoving. Only immersion into a new way of being in the world will alter those categories. Mary and company had encountered such a new way. Those encounters would so drastically re-form their lives that succeeding generations wouldn’t need to behold what they had beheld in order to experience the same shift.