But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense. Peter, however, got up and ran to the tomb. (Luke 24:11-12a, NIV)
I really can’t tell you how the golf swing works. I know that my early teachers could, and I have them to thank for a swing that hangs on today, not so much by theory as by practice.
Oh, I’m not completely clueless. The basic principles make good sense to me. But once we start getting into the finer points of position at the top or movement through the ball, I’m pretty lost. For me, if I set up well and start it back the same each time, the swing itself pretty much takes over from there.
When we surrender to mystery too readily, assuming God doesn’t want us to know this thing or that, we stand the chance of missing the very things God would have us see most.Am I content with this mystery? I suppose I am. At least on the days when the ball goes where I want it to go!
There is a sense of mystery in the spiritual realm, too, though it is not as complete as some would make it out to be. It is true that there is much we do not know about God. “The secret things belong to the Lord,” Moses told the people in his final messages to them (Deuteronomy 29:9a). And Isaiah confirmed that God’s “thoughts are not your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8). In many situations and places, we simply may not understand all we wish to understand about the ways of the Lord.
This seemed to be the concession the disciples made when the women returned from the tomb. Here these women were, going on and on about the stone rolled away, the angels in white, the report that Jesus was risen, just as he said he would be. Their words were a ramble, a craze, a mystery.
But then there was Peter, exercising the greatest “however” in history. The blustery one, whose ego had every reason to be reduced to inaction on the one hand but whose heart had every need for action on the other, heard only one thing. Could it be true? Was Jesus alive?
You see, when we surrender to mystery too readily, assuming God doesn’t want us to know this thing or that, we stand the chance of missing the very things God would have us see most. Him. And his wonder. Peter ran out of that locked room, beelined for the garden, and found what the women had found: an empty tomb!
“Seek and you will find,” Jesus said. We don’t always have to live in mystery.
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Jeff Hopper
March 25, 2016
Copyright 2016 Links Players International
The Links Daily Devotional appears Monday-Friday at www.linksplayers.com.