REFLECTIONS

Expect a Miracle

Who knows what Mary’s plans might have been for the remainder of the day. Like most of us though, she likely had a schedule mapped out in her mind. But whatever it might have been, her plan suddenly changed.

Daylight had not yet risen above the Mount of Olives as Mary Magdalen approached the site where Jesus’ lifeless body had been laid to rest. Two days earlier she watched him suffer and die. And she joined other sorrowful women to prepare his body to be tucked away in the tomb. But as she approached the grave site that dark early morning, she found the heavy round stone rolled away. Jesus wasn’t there.

Maybe she shouldn’t have been so surprised. Jesus promised he would rise again on the third day; but no one made sense of it. No one really expected a miracle.

“Expect a Miracle,” the sign reads at the entry to a place of rehabilitation founded by a man named Freddie Garcia. He had been a criminal himself before someone led him to discover Jesus Christ and he found salvation through Jesus’ sacrifice. So in gratitude, Freddie established Victory Home in prayer for miracles to happen there too. They do. When one former felon leads another to salvation from the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, it is a miracle. Miracles are more than happenings out of the ordinary. They are happenings that are only explainable as the hand of God. When miracles happen, God is there.

Surely, Mary Magdalen felt God’s hand had been there to roll away the stone that once secured the tomb. And as she peered into that empty cave, she must have been astonished to find grave clothes neatly folded and placed where Jesus body had once rested. Christ had risen. He had risen indeed.

Expect a miracle. A miracle happened with the empty tomb. Miracles happen at Victory Home every time a lost soul is led to Jesus Christ. And a miracle happened for me when Jesus died in my place.

The punishment he suffered was intended for me—the mocking, the spit, the thorns, the nakedness, the scourging, the nails, the thirst, the gall, the spear, and the solitude that separated him from God. Those are consequences deserved of my sinful life, not his. Instead, I feel Jesus standing beside me today, a towel wrapped around his waist and a bowl of water in his hand, gently washing my sins away—restoring my soul.

Surely, goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life,

and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

You are the light of the world,

Richard +

www.reflectingthesavior.org.

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