Moving the Stone

“Very early in the morning…they came to the tomb… ‘Who will roll away the stone from the door of the tomb for us?’ But when they looked up, they saw that the stone had been rolled away – for it was very large.” Mark 16:2-4

This morning as I read this account of Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of Jesus and Salome walking to the place where Jesus was laid to rest, I couldn’t help but to recall one night in February of 2011. My father-in-law who was suffering with Alzheimer’s had been living with us almost a year. It had been one of the toughest years of my life as I waded through the tumultuous waters of one of the cruelest diseases that remains incurable. It was a year when I felt most like a failure trying to handle my own emotions along with his challenges. I would look in the mirror and see a woman who was exhausted… irritated…frustrated…bitter. It was a constant tug of war between God reminding me who I was in Him and Satan convincing me how I was not measuring up. Finally, one morning before any light had broken through the dark, I went up into our loft and got on my knees and began sobbing and praying. I couldn’t stop and I didn’t want to stop because I felt I had held it back so long I needed to release it all. Looking back, I now understand that my tears and my prayers were expressing the same question. ‘Who will roll away the stone from the door of the tomb?’ My suffering was first thing on my mind ‘very early in the morning.’ I knew that the stone that lay before me wasn’t something I could move on my own. And just like the grieved and questioning women, I looked up from my prayers with a tear-drenched face and heard God’s gentle words, ‘Call Hospice…let them do the heavy lifting for you now.’ It never dawned on me to get Hospice involved with Alzheimer’s. That morning God rolled the stone away for me knowing the road had gotten too hard for me.

I know that many of you feel like your circumstances are too heavy for you to push through. I’m sure you are waking up with the challenges on your mind first thing wondering how you will get through this day…how can you move your circumstances so that the pathway can be clear? I am here to tell you that whatever you are facing, God has gone before you and rolled away the stone. He has the strength and the power and the wisdom for anything you face today. But He knows that you just might try to move the stone on your own, and He never meant for you to carry that load.

God’s promises are for you and for me, just like they were for the women who worried about the heavy stone they would never have to move. We can trust that God will remove the things that worry us at His determined time and in His perfect way. He has been doing it since the creation of time, and He will never pull back His saving hand during our journey.