Devotion: Pray-ers
Pray-ers
Please take the time to read Luke 8:1-3 and John 20:11-17
One of life’s greatest luxuries is reading a good book. To that end, one of the things I love most in this world is a beautiful sentence. Words, thoughtfully written in a specific order, that create a smell; a taste; a memory; a feeling; a full color, 4D image – maybe all at once – carefully accessorized with commas and semicolons in just the right place, are a gift.
And yet, even when an author is able to repeatedly make this happen in the same book, I often want to know what didn’t make it to the page. What were those two guys thinking when a woman came running up to them? What color were their eyes? What was she wearing? What did she have for breakfast? How would the event be described differently if one of those people were telling it and it was not being told through the lens of someone else? What else happened between verses 11 and 17 – and before and after?
Reading John’s version of this story, I really want to hear Mary Magdelene’s version first-hand. It would be different. She no doubt told the story to several people and they told it to others and so on. And as stories tend to do, it may be changed a little with each telling. And by the time it was captured in writing, this is what it looks like. But it doesn’t mean this is the whole story.
I choose to believe that in Mary’s version she would say that as a woman of faith, when she walked up to the tomb she was quietly praying, asking for guidance. And as she ran toward Peter and the other disciple, she was frantic, praying so hard her muscles hurt, anxious to tell someone that Jesus was missing and desperate to find his body. And standing outside the tomb crying, she continued to pray, choking on her tears and her words as she talked to the angels.
And it was through the power of those prayers she had the strength, grit and resilience to go find Jesus if that was going to be necessary and when it wasn’t, to go to the disciples with the news of his rising.
I have a friend who served on a panel discussion as part of a training. Her bio in the program listed several professional accomplishments and also described her as a mother, a wife, a writer, a runner and a pray-er. I love that!
Mary Magdalene was a pray-er.
When the bottom fell out of her life, the future appeared meaningless and the worst happened, she fell back on her faith and the power of prayer. Those are what propped her up, gave her the ability to breathe and go forward. As Pastor Michelle said in her sermon, the source of her resiliency came from her faith – and so does ours.
Embody it. Exemplify it. Preach it. Teach it. May the person in the mirror and the young people in our lives see that resiliency comes from faith and from the power of prayer. Let all of our bios – the young and not so young – describe us as pray-ers. We can do this! The worst is going to happen time and time and time again, but as Mary Magdalene found, with the power of prayer, so is the best – Jesus rose! (If that isn’t modeling resiliency, I’m not sure what is!)
Good, Gracious and Generous God,
May the strength you gave us and modeled for us be reflected in our faith in you. Help us to practice praying, to be in conversation with you, to be pray-ers. And let this prayer, and any that came before and those that come after, serve to build up not only my resiliency but the resiliency of our entire community.
Amen
Written by Dacia Kruse
Dacia lives in Lincoln and was married last October. She is a lobbyist and mediator through The Mediation Center where she primarily works with parents who are separating and trying to figure out how to co-parent their kids.
She has been a member of Sheridan since the late 1990’s. She regularly attends Lunch Table Theology and serves on a Saturday evening hospitality team, the Sunday morning Welcome Center team and as a Wedding Coordinator. In her free time, she likes to read, travel, shop and decorate her house.