Rolling Stones

I suppose it was the smashing, tumbling drama of the small boulder that Pastor Kisembo rolled in the Easter Sunday service yesterday that has stayed with me.  The resurrection itself has little witness, the flesh forming back over the 39 lashes, the life fluttering behind eyelids.  By the time anyone saw Jesus he was up and about in the garden, and mistaken for a gardener.  But somewhere between the stirring of breath, the swinging of pierced feet down from the slab to walk out of the tomb, and the meeting with Mary in the garden, there was a cataclysmic force that rolled the massive sealed stone door, open.  A blinding light, frightening rough soldiers into a dead faint.  

Because the women who were approaching the garden at dawn worried about how to get inside the tomb to embalm the body with their spices, we know it was no small rock.  And because they wanted to get IN, I think I've always thought of the "stone rolled away" in terms of our access to Jesus.  But primarily the stone was removed to give HIM access to US.  He was the first one who crossed that threshold, coming OUT.  

And I find that encouraging today.  God is willing, and able, to blast away anything that might stand between Him and His will.  Bethany posted on Easter using a phrase from a Mundri saint:  God will not be defeated.  Nothing will stand in His way, tons of stone, or hearts of stone, He will always break through to get out into the world, out among us, to find us, to speak and touch and heal and change.  To make all things new.