Raised To New Life

10010328_769704916374587_8054861620537599410_oDeep grief can often paralyze a person. We can be numb. We seem to be in a trance. We become unaware of what is going on around us. We do not hear. We are blind. After Jesus’ crucifixion, the disciples must have been paralyzed with grief, with dashed hopes, with utter anxiety about what to do next. How quickly an empty tomb shakes them out of their numbness and inaction and makes them run!

Mary’s first hint of the resurrection was of an empty tomb. She ran to Peter and “the other disciple whom Jesus loved” to tell them. Was her haste due to human anguish: “They have taken the Lord from the tomb”? The two disciples run to the tomb. Was their haste due to anguish or hope? When they saw the empty tomb, what did they believe? The gospel leaves open the answer to these questions. Belief in the resurrection takes time. It takes encounter with the risen One.

We will not run to an empty tomb. Yet we believe in the resurrection. We believe because of the witness of disciples, beginning with those first ones who did see the empty tomb. Like them, we must run—to seek and encounter the risen One who enables us to witness to the new Life of resurrection