Day 23 - Enjoy the Silence

Hi my friends.

Well, I am going to be honest and say that these thirty days seem to be super long! But hey, only seven to go! Tomorrow night I won't get to blog, but you better bet that I'll be here writing as soon as I get chance after that.

So, here we go. Day 23! :)

John 20:11-18 ---

¹¹but Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb ¹²and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus' body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot.

¹³They asked her, "Woman, why are you crying?"

"They have taken my Lord away," she said, "and I don't know where they have put him." ¹⁴At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.

¹⁵"Woman," he said, "why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?"
Thinking he was the gardener, she said, "Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him."

¹⁶Jesus said to her, "Mary."
She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, "Rabboni!" (which means Teacher).

¹⁷Jesus said, "Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet returned to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, 'I am returning to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.' "

¹⁸Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news: "I have seen the Lord!" And she told them that he had said these things to her.

Okay, this threw me off, what Jesus says back to Mary. Take a minute to put yourself in her position. Standing face to face with God on Easter, and then he says something like "Don't cling to me, I've not returned to the father yet." How do you feel? I'm almost embarrassed. Haha

Maybe Jesus was saying to Mary, "There is more to this story that you don't know. By clinging to what you know, you may miss out on what you have to discover. So, Mary knew Jesus as a teacher. What do you know Jesus as? Friend, co-pilot, Dad, Mr. Rogers? But... what if your desire to cling to what you know about jesus is exactly what stands in the way of your getting to know Him better? What if God wants to introduce us to a completely new dimension of who He is? What if He wants to be more for us then we now know Him to be? Following? Haha

Why are we so comfortable to cling to safe, comfortable notions of Jesus?

Okay, picture yourself looking into the face of Jesus. Don't rush this. What do you see, what do you hear? God is saying "There is so much more to know, so much more to see - don't cling."

Okay, as you journal... do you think that Jesus might want to open to you a story bigger than the one you've known, a picture bigger than the one you've seen - a Jesus deeper and more awesome than you know Him to be?

This silence made a lot of sense to me. :)

-Colton