John 20:16 NLT

“Dear woman, why are you crying?” Jesus asked her. “Who are you looking for?” She thought he was the gardener. “Sir,” she said, “if you have taken him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will go and get him.” “Mary!” Jesus said. She turned to him and cried out, “Rabboni!” 

The picture of Mary confusing Jesus for the gardener is a wonderful reflection of my own life, and I assume for you also. So many of the songs we sing in church these days are crying out to God to come and make himself known within the present reality of our worship. Yet, God has come and made himself known, through Jesus. It’s the essence of the incarnation. We have seen God because we have seen Jesus (John 14:9). Therefore, as Jesus asked Philip, “Why are you asking me to show [God] to you?” (NLT).

Mary assumed that Jesus’ body had been stolen. Yet, in reality, he was only an arm’s length away from her. Now she had to process the very first evidence for the resurrection, promised by Jesus, yet not understood by his followers. We are the beneficiaries of two millennia of testimony and experience that God is present in every moment and every life event. Still we struggle. We have to get beyond our inner demand that life should be good to us, for it completely distorts the work of God in the earth.

How much of what we embrace as the ‘good life’ is in fact the fiction of media projections into our subconscious? How often are we seeking to reproduce some artificial lifestyle or role that has been conceived by those eager to sell us something upon its back?

QUESTION: Do you miss the presence of Christ in your everyday life?

PRAYER: Lord Jesus, help me to recognise where you are at work in my life and to cooperate with you.