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Peter stepped out of the empty tomb and wandered away from the entrance. No one had stolen the body. There was no way anyone could remove the face linens like that. So what had happened? He stumbled around for a while, heading in no particular direction. He didn’t know where to go or what to do. His mind kept running through the facts over and over again, but he came to no new conclusions. After maybe an hour, he realized he was meandering toward Bethany. He wasn't on a road,

Mary caught up with Peter and John just as they both left the tomb. Their faces confirmed what she had suspected. The body was gone, and they had no answers. Their Lord was gone. Both disciples headed in different directions, wandering. Mary stepped up to the tomb herself, not wanting to look but compelled to do so anyway. There were the linens where her Lord should have been. Tears streamed down her face. Suddenly two men, dressed in white and bright as lightning, appeared i

John sat with Peter in the home of a friend in Jerusalem. The other nine disciples had gone to Bethany the night before, but Peter had not come with them, and John had gone to find him. He’d been worried about what Peter might do. After Jesus’ prediction about his betrayals had come true, Peter hadn’t been the same. They’d spent a long night talking and weeping, only sleeping for a few hours in the early morning. Now that it was getting light, they were planning to rejoin the

Mary Magdalene stared down the dark road that headed away from Bethany toward Jerusalem. It was a two mile walk to the tomb where Jesus had been laid to rest three days before. There were seven of them in total—Mary the mother of James and Joseph, Mary the wife of Clopas, Mary and Martha (the sisters of Lazarus), Salome, Joanna, and herself. The men had wrapped Jesus’ body with spices when they had buried him, but it had been close to the Sabbath, and they hadn’t done a suffi

John stood across from Lazarus in the house the man shared with his sisters. “I feel as though my very stomach has been ripped from my body,” he whispered. Lazarus nodded. John knew he felt it, too. The mother of John’s dead best friend, the woman he had entrusted to John's care before he died, entered the doorway. Fresh tears stained Mary’s face. John had lost a friend, but she had lost a son. He couldn’t imagine. It all seemed so wrong, like they were missing something big.

Peter slammed his fist into the wall around a window that faced the Jerusalem street. James called to him from the other room, but he ignored the man. He needed time alone, time to think. They had been so close. Roman overthrow had felt within reach. When all those people had hailed Jesus as they entered Jerusalem, it had seemed a sure thing. Next stop, Jesus on the throne and Peter at his right hand. What had gone wrong? Peter started pacing. He wanted to go for a walk, but

I had the opportunity to go strawberry picking today with the Dokters. This is the first time I've been strawberry picking since maybe middle school. I remembered almost nothing about what strawberry fields look like, how strawberries grow, or what the best strawberries look like. It took me a few minutes to figure out how to find the best strawberries and how to pick them without smooshing them. (Spell-check doesn't think smooshing is a word. It's wrong, clearly.) Something

When I was sixteen, I met my first apostate. He wasn’t one then, but it wouldn’t take long before he became one. He was a former pastor and state-side missionary who had just lost two sons. Through an unlikely set of circumstances, we became friends, and I watched as he went from believing the Bible to going on a quest for “truth” and then to becoming an atheist. It was the first time I had to come face-to-face with issues of eternal security and what apostasy really meant. I

For about a year now, I've been studying through the book of Proverbs, usually 3-5 verses a day. I have been trying to decide what I want to blog about next, and I think I want to talk about Proverbs for awhile. The number one thing Proverbs is known for is its wisdom. It was written by King Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived, and covers a very wide range of topics. One of the things I realized fairly quickly that I hadn't seen before was that Solomon equates wisdom with

This week we're talking about I See the Light from Tangled! Here's a link to the lyrics. This is a classic Disney falling in love song. There's flowers, hand-holding, float-y lights, and a boat. What more could you want? If I were to summarize this song, I would say that it's about two people who felt lost, alone, and purposeless prior to meeting and spending a bunch of time together. Now that they have, they feel like their whole reason for being is explained. This is summed

This week's post is on Friend Like Me from Aladdin! Here's a link to the lyrics if you need one. If you've heard this song, I can almost guarantee you've wished for a genie lamp. I mean, who doesn't want three wishes to get anything you want? Wouldn't it be great to get that thing you've been waiting for? To be famous? Respected? Adored? To live a life of ease? Would it? Here's the deal. We are finite beings. We can't see the future (and let's be honest, we really don't want

This week's post is on I Just Can't Wait to be King. You can find the lyrics here. According to one of my best friends, Zazu is my spirit animal. I can't say I disagree. The gist of this song is Simba is looking forward to the freedom and popularity of kingship without the responsibility. Zazu is trying to be the voice of reason, but it doesn't work well. The biggest reason behind this is just the way children see the future. All they know is their own world--their experience