Easter Monday

John 20:1-10

Luke 24:1-12

I have never seen a dead person come back to life. I know it can happen. I believe in the accounts of it happening in the Bible as well as hearing about a few modern miracles. But it's not exactly the norm which we all expect when someone we know passes away, simply because it happens so rarely. It certainly wasn't what Jesus' disciples expected or I'm sure they all would have joined Mary at His tomb before sunrise.
Jesus was quite thoroughly dead and the stone was far too heavy for any one person to move away from the entrance to the tomb. It must have been quite shocking and puzzling for Mary to see the empty, open tomb early Sunday morning. We have the benefit of knowing how the story continued later that day but Mary at that moment only saw the emptiness. She only saw a missing body, not a resurrected Savior. John apparently understood a little more since he "believed", but he doesn't clarify what he believed since he didn't know the Scripture. Perhaps his belief was a greater trust in God without having to know all the details: a realization that God is in control and is trustworthy even when it still seems like everything has gone completely wrong.
There is hope here for us to hold onto in our own lives. We don't always see or understand the complete picture anymore than Mary, Peter and John did. But we can hold onto faith in God no matter what the circumstances seem to be. We can remember when we see only an empty tomb that our Lord is in fact resurrected and we can hold onto the hope that we will soon see the reality of His miracle in our own lives despite the bleakness we're faced with at the moment. We can remember that we are in the middle of the story and although we don't know the details of the ending, we do know that Christ is always victorious.