Where Are You Looking?

“He isn’t here!”  [Matthew 28:6]

I enjoy playing golf. I’m not that good or I wouldn’t be writing blogs on a Thursday afternoon. Granted, I have played lots of golf in my lifetime. Whenever I tell myself, “Don’t hit it left,” guess what happens? Yep, it never fails…it goes left 100% of the time!

The same is true in driving a vehicle. In my first career, I took a highly specialized driver training course. It was the best and most fun training ever! One of the lessons we learned was about your gaze, or your focus. Whenever your eyes fixate on an object, you will run over it or hit it. The challenge was to train your eyes to focus on where you wanted to go, not on what you wanted to avoid. For example:  Don’t focus on the pothole, focus on where you need to steer to avoid it!

Here’s a question:  Do you routinely go looking for living, breathing people in a cemetery? I didn’t think so. Most people I know only go to the cemetery to visit the tombstone of a deceased person. Typically, we don’t find living, breathing humans at the cemetery.

Enter Mary Magdalene and the other Mary. Despite what they had heard Jesus say  about rising from the dead after 3 days, they visit the place where they last saw his dead body – a tomb located inside the entrance to a cave. They focused on the tomb because that was where they knew Jesus’ body had been laid.

Upon arrival at the tomb, the women were greeted by an angel who proclaimed, “He (Jesus) isn’t here! He is risen from the dead, just as He said it would happen.”  Despite what their ears heard and their eyes saw (an empty tomb), it was difficult to comprehend.

What about you? Are you focused on what appears dead or on what is alive? Easter is a great time to refocus our perspective and stop “hitting it left.”

Where is your focus this Easter?

HE IS RISEN!