I was eight years old when I found my mother face-down weeping on the couch. I stood there not knowing what to do to comfort her, not knowing the cause of her terrible distress. What I did not know at the time was that she was contemplating suicide and had already accumulated enough sleeping pills to end her life. What I learned many years later was that the weight of guilt and sin had torn all hope away from my mother’s heart and death seemed the only way out of her despair.
“What’s wrong, Mama?” I asked. She lifted her tear-stained face and, with a voice made raw from her weeping, said, “Read Mama something from the Bible, honey.” I raced into my parents’ bedroom to retrieve the only Bible we had, a King James version with tiny print. I knew nothing about the Bible, having just started Sunday School. In desperation, I let the Bible fall open and looked for a place to begin reading. My eyes fell on John 20:15, so I slowly read, “Jesus asked her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping? Who is it you are looking for?’”
I still remember my mother’s reaction to those words. She sat up absolutely startled! She later told me that she felt as if Jesus was right there in the graveyard of her disappointment, self-loathing, and the scattered, broken pieces of her life. Questions from God are potent, and this question powerfully rolled back the stone that was keeping my mother in the tomb. She realized that Jesus was asking her to acknowledge what was causing her pain and to face the fact that she had looked in the wrong direction for the acceptance and affirmation she needed so desperately. She had to face the same question the angels asked the women who entered the tomb, only to find it deserted: “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” (Luke 24:5). My mother’s Jesus was still on the cross; she had not yet met the resurrected Christ. She had not yet encountered the Jesus who announces in Revelation 1:18, “I am the Living One; I was dead, and now look, I am alive forever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades.”
God’s questions to my mother led her on a journey to discover the power and love of a risen Savior. A dear pastor, Dwayne Zimmerman from St. John’s United Methodist Church, mentored my mother and stood by her side as she walked from death into life. His greatest gift to her was to introduce her to God’s grace. The weight of her guilt, which had driven her to the brink of death, was lifted when she invited Jesus into her heart and received his forgiveness. For my mother, Galatians 2:20 expressed the hope, fulfillment, and reason she destroyed those sleeping pills and walked forward into life: “I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
What about you? Are you carrying a burden of sin and guilt that is crushing the life out of you? Might you have been looking in the wrong direction for the help and hope you need? Are you tired of camping in the tombs? Jesus sees your tears. He is in the graveyard with you, asking the one question that can turn you toward life: “Who are you looking for?” Open your heart to Him. Tell Him the truth. Ask the One who mastered death to bring you to life again. He will! He will!
For Further Study:
Psalm 18:46
Isaiah 42:3
Luke 4:18-19
Mark 26:28
Acts 2:38; 26:16-18
Ephesians 1:7
Grow Anyway 