Restoration and Resurrection

"Why do you look for the living among the dead?" That is one of the most striking questions that is written in the Bible found in Luke 24:5. It was asked by two angelic beings of a very frightened Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and other women who came in search for their teacher, friend, and spiritual guide Jesus after his crucifixion, death, and entombment. Please read Luke 24:1-12.

This question must have struck each of those women sharply and pulled them into a spiritual enigma. Jesus had already told them earlier that he would suffer, be savagely beaten and crucified. Jesus also told those women and several other followers, that after three days he would rise again, that death would not confine him.

Mary, Joanna, Mary, James' mother, and the other women believed what Jesus told them but possibly they figured that teaching was not to be taken at its word but was more like a story that would highlight a type of harsh journey that Jesus would have to undertake, but not one that would actually cause his physical death. Those women may not have wanted to seriously accept that Jesus would die one day, so better to put it into the category of a cautionary tale.

Today we, as readers of the Bible and believers in God's word, may also be thrown into an uncomfortable spiritual place. Because in many ways we have looked at the Bible as a written work that has certain things written in it that some may consider hyperbole or an allegory. Some of that is true, but not all of it. Nearly every Easter I have heard several people say that they came searching for the living God through the Bible regarding Jesus and his life and they seem to be fables, because they tell stories of people who died and had their earthly life restored to them, and people having had lifelong illnesses who were miraculously healed, and feedings of thousands of people with a tiny amount of food.

They, like the women who came looking for Jesus among the tombs when he told them that he would rise again in three days through resurrection, went back to what they knew, what they were familiar with, and what they could explain through their five senses. Some of us have come looking for the One who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, in places and with mindsets that are filled with that which does not give life, but only relies on empirical evidence for proof and who find it hard to accept God in human form who speaks and gives life, healing, restoration, and resurrection. There is a way to come to this understanding, but first, we must not continue to search for healing, restoration, and resurrection among the temporal and the disintegrating. "So, choose life in order that you may live..."