Mary

August 25, 2005
I was reading last night, in John 20, and was touched by the whole account of Mary Magdalene right after Jesus had died and was laid in the tomb. I love how she just didn’t know what to do with herself after He was gone… so she had just been hanging out where she knew his body was, where she had last seen Him.
In her grief, and I expect that she wasn’t at all a pretty sight, the “Gardener” comes up to her and asks her why she is weeping, WHOM is she seeking? I love that He addressed her REAL issue, without her realizing it. If she had really listened to Him, and shared from her smattered, aching heart who she really was seeking….. as she waited outside His tomb….., it would have been a tough conversation to have with a stranger.

I don’t know how many of you have lost someone dear. I haven’t really experienced the death of someone I was particularly attached to yet, well, except my cat, and that is almost the silliest comparison to make here… but it’s all I have. After my sweet little cat of 14 years minus a day passed away last year, I just kept expecting to see her for the next several months. It was the strangest thing. I’d be doing my hair in the mornings and I would just turn around and expect to see her sitting there patiently waiting for me to get out the food and greet her sweetness. A couple of times I even would crane my neck around the corner to see if she was down the hall, and as silly as I knew I was acting, I just couldn’t believe that she really wasn’t there.
I imagine it is sooooo very much more intense than that, of course, with people we dearly love. You think you can still call them up, you have a problem arise that you would normally ask their opinion about, and you expect that resource to still be there. You expect them to be sitting in their “usual” place at a family gathering, but they’re just not there. You might even drive by their house, and just be so upset that there is a different car in the drive way, or a for sale sign outside the house that never went unattended.

I think that deep in Mary’s heart, she was still expecting to see Jesus. Not so much in a “full of faith… I’m believing in God’s promises… I’m believing for a miracle” sort of way, but just in that normal human way that really needs some time to accept death as final.
When the “Gardener” asks whom she is seeking, she doesn’t really answer His question… she isn’t exactly about to bear her soul with a complete stranger, even though she obviously needs another human being to lean on at the moment. I love it when He says… “Mary”. And that’s all she needs to know that it was Him.
She had heard it so very many times before, and that wonderful voice, not just speaking, but speaking her name was the most wonderful music to her ears. That voice that she heard over and over in her head as she replayed the events of the last 24 hours as well as the events of the last several years that she had known Him, all the times she hung on His every word…. That voice was speaking out her name once again. It really was Him!

So today I take encouragement to know that HE knows my name…. And I know what He sounds like when speaks to me. There is nothing like being known by Him, and being redeemed by such a love that would lay down His life for His friends. He did it for her, He did it for me, and He did it for you.
If by chance you run into the “Gardner” today, you might want to listen a little longer, and answer His REAL questions He is asking you. You don’t freak Him out, He knows where each one of us is at, and He still approaches us and longs for us to hear Him speaking out our names.