RESURRECTION IS COMING
2 Consider it pure joy, my brothers, and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3 because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. 4 Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. 5 If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. James 1:2-5
For 15 months I inched my way through Luke’s Gospel, and what a fascinating journey it was! I walked with Jesus from the cradle to the cross. I watched and listened as He interacted with all sorts of people, from hypocrites to hooligans, from pious people to pagans. I was amazed at how He mirrored and modelled the Father in all He said and did. Now I also have a much clearer picture of who the Father really is.
I uncovered many treasures on this journey. Let me share one with you. Jesus is lying dead in the tomb. A small group of women stumble through the early morning light to carry out their last act of love – to anoint His body with spices, a gesture for which they had to wait until the Sabbath was past.
In their grief, they want to freeze this moment in time, to hold on to their pain and get the most out of it because of their love for Him. Beyond this moment, they must forget about Him and move on, but right now they don’t want to let go. All their hopes lie broken with the body in the tomb. They want to savour the memory of touching Him once again and of saying a final goodbye.
But when they got to the tomb He was not there. The tomb was empty. God was moving on. How much grief they had wasted! How much pain they had endured! If they had only remembered that Jesus said He would rise again! If they had only trusted Him, they could have saved the devastation and disappointment they had felt and the time and the work they has wasted preparing for His burial.
How frustrated He was with the two on the road to Emmaus. They were speaking as though their whole world had come to an end. “We had hoped…” they whined in the presence of the risen Jesus!
How much like them we are! We don’t enjoy our pain and yet, somehow, we want to hold on to it just for a while, to feel the emotion of it so that we can lock it in our memory forever. We want to freeze our moment in time. We are so caught up in our fear, anxiety, and anguish that we forget that nothing takes God by surprise. His plans and His agenda are in place. While we sit and mourn our situation, He moves on and we are in danger of being left behind.
We discover too late that, if we had only trusted Him, we could have saved ourselves the pain and wasted energy of our disappointment grief or loss. If we had simply waited on God, we would have seen the next step opening before us.
James said, “When you don’t understand your trial, trust God, and ask Him for wisdom. He’ll give it to your freely and then you’ll know and experience joy because you’ll realise He is maturing you.” (LAC)