He IS Risen from the Dead, Just Like He Told Us

It's True! I saw Him. He spoke to me. He said my name!

Mary of Magdala could say those words in all truth. And sometimes I think wouldn't it be wonderful to be able to say those words along with her? To know absolutely, beyond the shadow of a doubt that He is risen because I saw Him alive? To know by more than just faith. To know because I saw it for myself. Even just to know because there is a particular place on the face of the planet where I could point and say, "See, there is the empty tomb. So He must be risen." Or to be able to show someone the burial cloth and say, "Look, this is the cloth He was buried in. It is empty."

But then I remember His words, "Blessed are they who have not seen and yet have believed." In this world where absolute truth is personal and relative, "Blessed are they." Where there is basically no way to convince people that you really possess absolute truth because they refuse to believe even when it makes sense, much less when it doesn't, "Blessed are they." Where you are free to believe your own truth as long as you allow me to be free to believe mine, "Blessed are they."

The fact is there is no place where I can take you, no empty tomb to which I can point you, no burial cloth I can hand you. I cannot claim to have ever physically heard His voice calling my name. I have never seen Him. And yet I believe. And He calls me blessed because of it.

I believe because He died for me. I believe because He forgave me. I believe because I have heard His voice calling in the night. I believe because He rose for me. I believe because I have experienced His grace in my life, changing me, strengthening me, teaching me to walk with Him.

This belief is great beyond words. It is the kind of belief that produces such joy that I cannot help but cry aloud, such joy that I cannot hold back tears, such joy that I cannot get enough of it.

And yet in our postmodern world, I have only found a truth that works for me? I struggle to understand, to grasp this. How can something this powerful only work for me? How can anyone even think that? There can only be one answer. In a world where nothing makes sense and nothing is expected to make sense, the only way anyone could discount something like this as "relative truth" is if they have not experienced it. Because if they had, no way would they go back.

So how to we show them? I don't like postmodernism. I don't understand it. I can't. I don't want it to be this way. Relativism is one of my worst nightmares come true. But is is here. It is now. It is not going away. There is nothing I can do to change the way people think. And people think truth is relative. So how do we make them understand? How do we get through to them? Christ's command to go and make disciples includes us, here and now in the time in which we live. We can't change that time. We can't go back to the Renaissance. We can't make everyone think in a logical, reasoning way. (And even if we could, there's no proving something like the resurrection without the experience.) So how do we fulfill His command? How can they hear when they will not? God, show us the way.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5p7H4Oiaxb0