Login

The gates and doors were barred and all the windows fastened down. I’d spent the night in sleeplessness; woke at every sound, half in hopeless sorrow and half in fear that the day would find the soldiers breaking through to drag all of us away.

Just before the sunrise, I heard something at the wall. The gate began to rattle - a voice began to call. I hurried to the window looked down into the street, expecting swords and torches, and the sound of soldiers feet.

There was no one there but Mary. I went down to let her in. John stood there beside me, as she told us where she’d been.

She said “they’ve moved him in the night and none of us knows where. The stones been rolled away, now his body isn’t there.”

We both ran towards the garden, John ran on ahead. We found the stone and the empty tomb just the way that Mary said, and the binding sheet they’d wrapped Him in was just an empty shell and how or why they’d taken Him was more than I could tell.

Something strange had happened but what I didn’t know. John believed a miracle, I just turned to go. Circumstances and speculation couldn’t lift me very high, for I’d seen them crucify Him, and then watched Him die.

Back inside the house again, the guilt and anguish came, and everything I promised Him just added to my shame. When it came to choices I denied I knew His name and even if He was alive it wouldn’t be the same.

Suddenly the air was filled with a strange and sweet perfume light that shone from everywhere drove shadows from my room. Jesus stood before me, His arms out open wide.

I fell down on my knees and calling to Him and cried. He raised me to my feet and as I looked into His eyes, love was shining out from Him like sunlight from the skies. Guilt and my confusion disappeared in sweet release, and every fear I ever had just melted into peace.