How marvelous.
I can tell you, dear reader, that as I read these glorious and resplendent scriptures, with my hands gently clutching their pages, tears stinging my eyes and my voice cracking, there was a denotion that my Redeemer lives more stronger than I've ever felt within my soul before. I felt sweet revelation and deep unearthly nostalgia to somehow remember where I was when my Savior returned and recall how joyous I felt. As I wept over these marvelous scriptures, I was impressed to roll over and kneel upon my bedside (within my little nook where I was reading) and utter unto my Lord and Heavenly Father how loving, light and spiritual I felt.
I then began to think.
Can you imagine how it must've looked on that beautiful, bright morning? Can you imagine softly walking through the dewy grass only just covered in morning sunlight as you descend calmly to the tomb, where you think the Son of God still lays wrapped in fine linen and enclosed in darkness from a stone that sealed His borrowed tomb? I'd like to think that Mary Magdalene already knew He would be gone so her sudden flicker of fear and despair was not so unjustly brought. But we know this isn't so. When she looked into the tomb and not only saw it empty, but immediately was overcome with fear that He had been stolen--she must've felt despair beyond comprehension. Then I think of another so deeply distraught with grief and fear--the mother God, the other Mary. We may never relate to how this dear, pure creature felt. I think of when she, the woman who once held her baby close inside a shivering manger, she who carried the spirit of the Savior inside her arms, must've felt when she realized her Son was truly gone. How lonely and challenging that must have been. After all that mother went through--seeing her sweet Son being dragged into the street where He was crowned with thorns pressing in His brow and His weak body whipped after already enduring a night full of the world's sins, and then forced to walk with a load weighing on His red shoulders to the very cross He would be nailed to just moments away. This mother must've worried with a love we may never understand . But we all might feel a bit of what overwhelming joy the Mary of Magdalen was flooded with the very moment she realized the gardener behind her weeping figure was not any gardener--it was her Gardener.
Her Savior.
Alive.
It is no mystery that the only word she uttered in reply was, "Raboni" (which is to say, 'Master'), but it is a curious and astounding thing that one of the Savior's first words as a resurrected Being was the name of this sweet, weeping follower, "Mary". Can we not all relate, as followers of Christ as well? It was what He chose to say. I find this more than deeply stirring and even more so intriguing that He did not say, "Here I am", or "It is me, the resurrected Savior of the world". He directed it all to one name--and not His own. This moment, what Jesus of Nazareth did, can teach us more about Himself and His ways than anything else.
I want to end this post with my testimony of my Savior's resurrection and denote to you that I know, now more than I ever have before, that my Savior lives and died for us. He is the Gift, He is the Author, and He is the King.
And He most certainly is Risen.
May the angels of our Father and the Spirit of this true gospel denote that same truths that I felt today on this glorious Easter Day, to you as well.
I say these things in the name of my Beloved Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
-(k.p.b)
