My Way

John 20:11-18

Phrases that spoke to me today:
• Mary stood weeping outside the tomb
• she did not know that it was Jesus
• do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father
• go to my brothers and say to them

Applying the Word to My Life:
By the time Mary gets to this part of the story, Peter and John have already come and gone. They saw the empty tomb, believed something real happened, and went back home still not understanding what it meant. But Mary stayed. She stood weeping outside the tomb after they'd already left. They experienced the same absence and responded in two completely different ways.

It's tempting to read that as a scorecard, her faithfulness against their retreat or her inability to move on and their ability to get back to the world. I don't think that's what's actually happening. Peter and John could carry an unresolved belief home with them and keep living; that was enough for what they needed right then. Mary couldn't do that. She needed Him, specifically, before she could move at all. Staying wasn't the more faithful response. It was the one she needed.

She sees a man standing there, hears him ask why she's weeping and who she's looking for, and still doesn't know Him — she takes Him for the gardener. All the information a person could ask for is right in front of her, and none of it does the one thing she needs it to do. Then He says one word. Her name. And everything turns at once — she doesn't reason her way to Him, she's addressed by Him. Revelation really is tailored to each individual person, and this is the proof of it. Mary needed to be known specifically as herself before she could know anything at all.

Now that she's received what she'd been staying for, she doesn't get to keep it the way she wants to. He tells her not to cling to Him — He hasn't ascended yet — and sends her to the very people who'd already gone home. Tradition calls her the apostle to the apostles for exactly this reason: she's the one entrusted to carry the Good News to people who are about to be met a completely different way. Getting what she needed didn't mean she got to stay in it. It meant she had something to carry to people whose need looked nothing like hers.

It's tempting, reading this, to start ranking the responses — deciding staying was more faithful than leaving, or that whatever revelation looked like for one person is the version everyone else should be getting too.

I'll be honest about my own place in this: I'm not someone tied to any one method of prayer or revelation. I don't get the intense, unmistakable experiences some people describe, and for a long time I read that as a gap. It isn't. It just means my own path never handed me a single answer to give everyone else. If anything, it's what lets me help people whose faith looks nothing like mine — I'm not measuring them against an experience I never had in the first place, and I am free to help them find where God is calling them.

In a world where competition reigns supreme, revelation takes its own path. We're here to help each other along the way, but that has to mean helping people toward whatever way God is actually revealing Himself to them, not holding fast to what He did for us.

My Response for Today:
When I meet someone seeking deeper faith, instead of blindly insisting they follow my path, I'll stop and ask what they actually need instead.