Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path. Psalm 119:105
Mark 16
Mary 16:7 But go and tell his disciples . . . NIV.
After leaving the hospital having just met my first grandchild, I commenced telling everyone I knew the good news. I had held her in my hands and informed my parents, siblings, friends, and coworkers that I’d seen the most wonderful and beautiful child in the world. Most of us like to share good news. Usually, we do not need anyone to command us to tell others, we share the good quickly and without hesitation.
Why then did the angel have to tell these three women to spread the good news? They had come to complete the burial preparations and add spices to the body of their Savior. Instead of a body, they discovered empty cloths where the body had lain. Instead of a sealed tomb, a moved stone. Instead of solitude an angel who announced the good news. Jesus was no longer dead. He rose again just as He predicted. I can only imagine the joy and happiness the women felt. So, why the nudge to tell?
I suspect the women were realists. They knew how strange the news would appear to the disciples. Weren’t they behind locked doors cowering in fear. And who ever raised themselves from the dead? None they’d ever known. Besides they were women and their testimony was not counted for much. The other gospels record how the disciples discounted their account. So, possibly the angel knew they needed motivation and so commissioned them to tell the news. And they did.
We, today, need to remember that like these women, we are not to keep the good news of Jesus’ work in our lives to ourselves. We are to share what God had done in our lives with those around us. Isn’t this the greatest news of all? Think of John’s account of the man born blind, whom Jesus healed. The leaders wanted him to denounce Jesus, but the man declared, “This I know, once I was blind and now I see.”
How great is God’s love. So unbelievable He sent His Son to live as one of humanity’s billions, to show us the Father, to teach us truth, and to take the punishment for our sin. Then He rose victorious. God’s love is not just vast in its sacrifice, it is amazingly immense in its intent. God so loved everyone in the world, He acted as He did for us.
Perhaps we need to hear what the angel said to the women and accept the nudge to “Go and tell …” the news to those who are potential disciples.
May the words of my mouth and the actions of my life proclaim God’s transforming love through Jesus. Amen.
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