Pray with us - A series of Easter reflections
Transforming Nottinghamshire Together is supported by the Church Urban fund (CUF). Join our national team as they reflect and pray this Holy Week and Easter. Visit throughout the weeks as we make our journey together.
Here's Bishop ROB WICKHAM, Group Chief Executive Officer
Peter and John had the ability to run away. Mary did not. She was left, paralyzed in fear, alone in a place of death, a graveyard.
Her intentions were kind. On the first day of the week, she had arrived to anoint the body of Jesus that she had witnessed being brutally murdered and buried. She had no thought of the stone that needed to be moved, such was her confusion. She was engulfed in grief.
Now, face to face with an empty tomb, she freezes in danger. She concludes that the body had been stolen. Was she being watched? Was she next?
A man appears.
In a panic Mary blurts out, asking if he had taken this body.
‘Mary’ comes his soft voice.
Her fear turns to joy. Mary’s eyes well with tears. She is unable to control herself. She flings forward to cuddle this man who is love. It is Jesus.
Jesus met Mary in her greatest fear. This encounter, and millions since, reveal God’s unconditional love, the defeating of death, and the reforming of humanity; loved, forgiven and in peace. All that Jesus had said was truth, and Mary became the first to tell the world.
