Wednesday, April 14

She turned around and saw Jesus standing there but she did not know that it was Jesus.
—John 20:14

Sometimes we become so absorbed with our own concerns and emotions that they spill out of us like water in an oversaturated sponge, dripping over every surface in our lives.

There may be valid reasons for our lumbering, cumbersome self to be so unwieldy, but the results of our over-identification with what we're feeling—what has happened to us—is that we lose attentiveness. 

Not only do we become blind to the movement of normal activities, we completely miss the subtleties of important changes around us. We are not able to dig so easily into our memory banks and make connections with what seems out of context to us.

This was Mary's problem. Not only was she absorbed in all the events that had recently occurred and the grief that stabbed like a lance in her soul. She was unable to make connections with what seemed out of context. The very one she was grieving stood right in front of her, but she did not recognize him. In her mind and heart he was dead. She would never have considered the possibility that he could be alive again.

But, suppose she had not been so absorbed in the events and her grief. She might have looked at the man before her and said, “You look just like Jesus!” Or, “I must be imagining things. Could this be Jesus?” What would that have done for her heart and her grief?

Just imagine what would happen in your own life if you could step away from your own self long enough to see what is right before you.

Gracious God, wring out that which is in me that keeps me heavy and blind to the miracles around me.

These Signposts originally appeared on explorefaith in 2008.