![]() The text says that after Mary goes back and she speaks to the disciples, "Somebody has taken him." After they run back to the tomb and they see the fact that it is now empty, the Bible tells us that she looks and sees angels sitting there in the grave that point her outward into the garden. She would have seen the images there of corruption and she wonders and she asks, "Where have they taken him, someone has come in and robbed the grave, someone has taken the body of this man whose words I believed, this man that I left everything to follow, and his dead body has been taken." She was wrong. She walks up and she sees that the stone has been rolled away, and she sees there cloths that would have been used to wrap up a corpse. Mary walks into this garden and she thinks that she is encountering a grave robbing. It would have had vegetables growing, perhaps grapes growing. But that's not the kind of garden that Mary found herself in. Now, we tend to misunderstand this because when we think of grave and garden, we think of the fake gardens that we have constructed for graveyards all around us, memorial gardens, rolling meadow gardens in which you have people coming through with weed eaters and keeping everything looking green and stately. No one wanted to haul this body a long way so they laid him in a tomb, in a borrowed tomb of a rich man there in a garden. It says that Jesus after he had been crucified was taken down. Scripture tells us here that Mary goes into a garden that is also a grave place. Notice first of all that in this garden, God is reversing the story of corruption. What she sees is God reversing the whole story of the universe. As this woman stands in this garden, what she sees is not just a happy ending to a story she has been playing out to herself. She thinks that it is a coincidence that she winds up in a garden but Scripture tells us that what she is facing here isn't just a personal crisis, she is facing an ancient curse. This woman named Mary, thinks that she is facing a personal crisis. A wreck that you and I have then repeated in all of our lives. The story in Genesis three is a story of something that wrecked, something that went wrong in a garden at some point in history. Every human being asks that question because your little story and my little story is part of a much longer, a much older, a much bigger and a much deeper story telling us why the things around us just aren't right. I don't know if that's true but I know if it is this is why: Because we are asking could I turn it back, could I reverse the course of this story. They tell me that the moment before that happens, they say your life flashes before your eyes. All of us will experience what we cannot imagine now: The primal fear that we are slipping out into the night of death. ![]() Because all of us will one day find ourselves hearing the whirring of machines around us, the beeping of monitors, the pulling of ventilators, the rustling of cords. Some of you may not have that moment yet but you will. Some of you have questions in your mind, you have an image of something you would love to reverse, to erase. If only I hadn't slipped that hotel card into that keyhole. If only I hadn't gone to that party that night. You're saying to yourself, If only I hadn't been fiddling with that radio in the car that one moment. Maybe even parts that only took just a second or a minute or a split tick on the clock. Some of you have parts of your story that are horrifying. ![]() Mary was probably trying in her mind to do what all of us try to do at some point or another: To reverse the past, to go backward in the story. If only Peter had been able with his sword to fight. If only there wasn't all of this tumult going on in the empire right now. If only his disciples had hidden him somewhere else. Mary, the woman from Magdalene, was probably asking herself, If only he hadn't come in to Jerusalem during this time of trouble. There was just darkness, and some women walking through a big city on the way into some woods. When she finishes her first "study" (which is on the Fruits of the Spirit by the way), she plans to print a set to hand out to her small group at church.There were no streetlights, headlights, or even flashlights. They are absolutely precious (in her own little 12-year old way), and she prints one off each morning for our entire family to complete during our quiet time. We've purchased many of your Bible Studies and a few other wonderful homeschooling resources, all of which we absolutely love!!! Still, I believe the greatest compliment I can give you is that because of your Bible Studies that my children and I have completed together, my oldest daughter has been so inspired, she's started creating her own daily devotionals, modeled after the ones you've made. I wanted to write to encourage you and say, "THANK YOU!" I've been following your blog for years, and you have made such a lasting impression on my entire family.
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