""The angel said to the woman, '...I know that you are looking for Jesus.'" Matthew 28:5

Praise God! These AnGeLs know that women today are still looking for Jesus! We have been given the awesome privilege of directing them to Him, and Him alone! Consider the testimony of one woman, as I describe it in my new book, Just Give Me Jesus:

Mary walked slowly back from Jerusalem to the garden. Her feet must have felt like leaded weights, her heart must have felt as though it were constricted in a vise, and her eyes must have stared glassily ahead without seeing. The past few hours had commenced and concluded so suddenly! So swiftly! So shockingly! She must have had a huge struggle just adjusting to the surprise of it all. As she walked, did she look back over the memories of the last few years…?

She had once been possessed of seven demons. Was she remembering the fear…the rage…the torment…the depression…the jealousy…the immorality…the misery that had been hers in a lifetime of bondage that had seemed so far, far away but was now returning with an acute awareness? Did the old burden of filthy guilt, the old impulse of self-destruction, the old bondage of enslavement by evil come back to her as she trudged to the garden tomb? Were the sin and memories of her past beginning to cling to her once again like loathsome things?

Mary Magdalene had been set free from her sin and her tormentors and her self the day she met Jesus. Was she already beginning to feel the loss of her freedom? With His death, she had no peace and purpose in her life. She knew without Him she would never be anything other than what she had been—a desperate, hopeless, helpless, hell-bent sinner.

As she worked her way through the crowds that were packing up and beginning to trudge home after the Passover celebration, did she reflect on the first time she had met Jesus? How, among the throngs of people, had He happened to notice her? And would she ever forget the searing hope that gripped her heart as she came under His gaze? Had she trembled in fear as she sensed the supernatural power of His Person? Had she spewed uncontrollable venom in His direction as the demons within her frantically squirmed and resisted His authority, which they also recognized? Yet when He had addressed them in a Voice that was terrifyingly familiar, commanding them to leave, they had! Just like that!

The struggle of a lifetime had ceased, and she had been set free. Free to love God and enjoy Him and serve Him and follow Him in the Person of His dear Son. For the first time in her horrible, dysfunctional life, she had known real peace and joy and fulfillment and understanding and acceptance. Jesus had seen her—a person who was spiritually deformed and twisted by the enemy—yet He had looked past the obvious to the potential of the person she was meant to be. And He had loved her. For the first time in her life she had a reason for living. And He was her reason. . .

Following that first encounter, He had never again brought up her past. Instead, He had given her the feeling He had forgotten about it. He had convinced her she was of great value and precious in God’s sight. He had lifted her up from the quicksand of sin that had kept her mired in defeat and depression. He had set her feet on a firm foundation of God’s grace and mercy, and He had caused her to walk with her head held high under the banner of His truth and love! Oh, how she loved her Lord!

All that He had done for her and all that He was to her had made her nightmare that much blacker when she had heard the rioting early Friday morning at the Hall of Judgment. She had recognized some of the voices. They were sickeningly familiar. They were the voices of her seven former tormentors, joined by a legion of others, all shouting, “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!” And she had fallen into a whirlpool that threatened to suck out her insides when she learned that it was His blood for which they were screaming! As she ran to the city center, stumbling over the uneven cobblestones, tripping over the hem of her own garments, had she desperately sobbed, “God, no! No! Don’t let it be so! God, help us!”?

She had plunged into the bloodthirsty mob until she was caught up in the flow of it, pressed in on all sides by heaving, shoving, angry bodies as they followed His bloody trail up Calvary. Here and there, she had glimpsed other horror-stricken faces, but any protest they might have made was drowned out by the rising tidal wave of maniacal hate. She had stood at a distance from the Cross, unable to bear a closer look at the inhuman brutality and cruelty of His execution. The humiliating shame and excruciating pain that He bore were like a living thing that lacerated her very soul. She could not bear to watch, yet she had been unable to tear herself away. She was still there when the air was split by the startling strength and clarity of His triumphant cry, “It is finished!” She had seen His body go limp—and with it her entire life. Her hope, her joy, her peace, her reason for living had crashed and shattered at the foot of that blood-stained Cross.

Yet she had stayed. She had joined the other women in their lonely vigil of grief. She had watched with anxious worry as Joseph and Nicodemus had taken the beloved body from the Cross, and she had followed them, slipping softly through the darkness to learn where His body would be laid. When the embalming process had seemed rushed, her grieving heart had seized on something she could do for Him in His death, and she had planned some way, somehow, to finish the process as soon as she was able on Sunday morning. All Friday evening and Saturday and Saturday evening she must have comforted herself by looking forward to Sunday morning when she could do something for Him, even if only to pay final homage to Him by anointing His dead body.

But now, now, her world that had been smashed on a Roman Cross was trampled into a thousand pieces by the violation of Jesus’ tomb! As she neared the Garden, her eyes swam with tears. She knew she was on the verge of total emotional disintegration as she “stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been” (John 20:11-12). While the angels may have paralyzed the elite Roman guard, they didn’t seem to faze Mary when they inquired, “Woman, why are you crying?” (John 20:13).

Mary’s reply is one that is echoed by God’s people throughout the church today, “They have taken my Lord away…and I don’t know where they have put him” (John 20:13). Have you heard the heart cries of those like Mary, even within the church, sobbing out, “God, You used to be in my life—where are You now? I long to be near You. I long to know Your presence and feel Your love in my life, but they have taken You away and I no longer know where to find You.” Is her cry, your cry? &#x201God, just give me Jesus. Please!”

The angels didn’t verbally respond to Mary. Instead, they must have looked intently past her, watching something over her shoulder. Sensing Someone standing behind her, she followed their gaze, and saw “Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus” (John 20:14). He was right there, in her life, and she didn’t know it! He had come to her, and she didn’t recognize Him!

Could it be, as you search for Jesus, that He is with you? Now? Beside you as you read this, drawing your attention to His Word that He might reveal Himself to you?

Mary straightened up as she turned to face Him, and the question Jesus challenged her with is one that resounds in our day: &#x201Woman…why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?” (John 20:15)

Today, with all of our liberation and feminization and equalization and assertion and recognition, women are still unhappy! We are still “crying.” The high rate of divorce and drug dependency, of abortion and alcoholism, of immorality and therapy reflect the tears of a generation of women who are looking for Someone. And our Lord’s gentle voice still prods, “Woman, why are you crying? What’s missing in your life? Why are you so empty? What are you looking for? Who are you looking for?”

With tears running down her cheeks and blurring her vision, Mary jumped to another conclusion. She thought He was just a man. She thought “he was the gardener.” She begged Him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him” (John 20:15). How she expected to do that, only Mary knew! She just wanted to be near the body of her beloved Lord.

Then the One Who was her Shepherd called her by name, “Mary” (John 20:16). Her head must have snapped up as her eyes focused sharply on the “gardener.” We can only imagine the electrified shock that caused every taut, frayed nerve in her body to tingle as she recognized her Shepherd’s voice and saw, with her own eyes, her Shepherd’s face!

There, standing before her, was Jesus! Alive! In His physical body, with the fresh wounds on His brow where the thorns had been and the fresh wounds in His hands and feet where the nails had been! He was alive! How could it be? But He was! And she flung her arms around Him, and cried “Rabboni!” (John 20:16).

As she clung to Him and felt His flesh and bones and life, she knew He was more than she ever had thought Him to be! Never again would she be empty or lonely, loveless or lifeless, hopeless or helpless, captured or condemned because He was alive! Heaven was opened for her!

And that’s where many of us long to be—in the arms of the risen Lord. That’s where many of us long to stay! But when we truly come and see the facts of the resurrection for ourselves, when we meet and know the risen Christ personally, we are compelled to go and tell the glorious good news to someone else.

What joy Mary must have experienced as she obeyed her Lord’s command! She was the first in a long line of disciples who have eagerly “run” to tell their world about Jesus—a line that has continued even to us. As this AnGeL keeps her focus on Him, my prayer is that others will follow my gaze and encounter Jesus in a fresh, new way. And then with great joy, together we will “run” to tell our world, “I’ve seen the Lord! He’s alive!”

In His Joy,

Anne Graham Lotz