Commissioned by the Lord himself, entrusted with the most important announcement in history, did Mary Magdalene balk? Argue? Insist he come with her? She did not. Like the prophet Isaiah, Mary declared, if only with her actions, “Here am I. Send me!” (Is. 6:8).
“Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news” (John 20:18). Did she run? That’s my vote. “Away came Mary Magdalene” (AMPC), as fast as her sandal-covered feet could take her until she “found the disciples” (NLT).
Jesus had given her a simple message to relay—the same simple message he gives us. Tell the world I am alive. Tell the world I am your God. Can you do it, sister? Say to a stranger, “I serve a risen Savior, who loves his own”? Confess to a coworker, “I believe in Jesus, who died for my sins and lives in my heart”? Mary Magdalene shows us the way. With Christ’s authority she “announced” (CEB), “informed” (NET), and began joyfully “reporting to the disciples” (AMP) the living proof they’d been waiting to hear. “I have seen the Lord!” (John 20:18).
Oh, those five world-shaking words! Her expression, her exuberance, her exaltation made it abundantly clear that she had not seen him lying in the grave. “I saw the Lord!” (EXB), she told them. She’d heard him speak her name, she’d touched him for an instant, and she’d definitely seen him fully alive.
This is where I start thinking, If only I’d lived in the time of Jesus. If only I’d seen him with my own eyes. Then I remind myself we can see the Lord every day. Shining forth from the pages of his Word. Reflected in the faces of those who are filled with his Spirit. Captured in the moments of true worship spoken and sung in our churches.
He is more alive than ever, my friend, and he is coming back! Job, who lived after the Flood and long before Moses, said “I know that my redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand on the earth” (Job 19:25). Some 2,000 years later, Mary Magdalene—a woman—echoed the same amazing revelation. “And she told them that he had said these things to her” (John 20:18).
Liz Curtis Higgs is an internationally-known speaker and the author of more than 30 books, including The Women of Easter. Learn more at LizCurtisHiggs.com. Devotions are adapted from The Women of Easter. Copyright © 2017 by Liz Curtis Higgs. Published by WaterBrook, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC. Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations within these devotions are from the New International Version, used by permission.
