Before you touch anything today, one breath belongs to you and to God. Take a slow breath. Do you feel it? This too is not your own doing: you received it. The Father's love is already sitting here with you in the quiet of the room; you need do nothing for it. It wraps around you just as you are, tousled, half asleep, before all the still unlived cares of the day.
Jesus leans close. Right to your ear, the way he once did in a garden, at dawn, to a weeping woman. And the Holy Spirit is filling your lungs with air right now, quietly, faithfully. You are not the one who begins the day. He begins it in you, and calls you into it.
„Jesus said to her, Mary! She turned and cried out, Rabbouni!" (which means Teacher). John 20:16
It was still dark when Mary set out for the tomb. Not the dark of hope, but the dark of grief: the one she loved had died, and now she wanted at least to find his body, to have somewhere to bring her tears. You know this early hour. When a person rises to do what must be done, while the heart stands before an empty grave.
And the tomb really was empty. What remained was the absence, and a woman weeping as she searched for a body in the dawn garden. Loneliness is sometimes exactly this: not that no one is around you, but that you are searching for the one who is no longer where you last left him. Jesus stood behind her, but she thought he was the gardener. How near someone can be whom we fail to recognize through our tears.
Then a single word. Not an explanation, not a teaching, not a comforting speech about death. Just her name. „Mary." And at this one word she turns. What until now had been the gardener's back turns out to be the face of the living Lord. The landscape around her did not change, the dawn did not grow brighter. She turned, because she was called.
Notice what Jesus did not do. He did not wait for Mary to compose herself. He did not reproach her for not believing sooner. He went into the very middle of the grief, and from there he called her out, by name. He did not bring the light from outside, like a lantern. He became light in that woman's night. He inhabited the darkness from within until it was no longer darkness, but dawn.
So this morning do not believe what weariness whispers. That you are alone with all of this. That anxiety will devour the day before it even begins. Do not seek the dead Christ any longer in the empty tomb: he is alive, and the same voice that called Mary by name is calling you today as well. Not some composed, perfect version. You, just as you are, right where you stand.
Christ has conquered death. Not in theory, not somewhere far away: in his own body, once and for all. And this victory does not stay behind in the Easter garden. It follows you into this present Wednesday, into the work, the phone calls, the decisions, the quieted rooms. Only turn around. You do not have to go far for it. One word, your name, and already you see.
Today I ask a single gesture of you, nothing more. In the morning, before the phone can pull you in, stop for half a minute and speak your own name to God, aloud or only within: „Here I am, Lord, and I turn to you." Then stay silent while you breathe ten times. Ask for nothing meanwhile. Just let him call you.
During the day, when the grey of anxiety or loneliness first grips you, do not fight it. Turn around, like Mary in the garden, and repeat softly: „The living Lord calls me by name." A burden that settled on your shoulders this morning, set it down here, now, in a single sentence. He lifts it up, as on Easter morning he already lifted everything.
I praise you, because you did not look upon me out of nothingness, but gave me a name before I had a single day. I praise you, because you keep watch over the dawns when someone sets out weeping toward the gardens, and you do not turn away from the tears. I magnify you, because under your palm is written every person the world has already given up on. I bless you, because your mercy is not a concept, but a hand that reaches beneath me when I fall, and the depths I am ashamed of you bury at the bottom of the sea, from where there is no return.
I praise you, risen Lord, because you did not let the grave be the last word. I magnify you, because you stepped out of death, and your first act was the name of a weeping woman. I praise you, because this is how you know me too: not as a crowd, not as a case, but by name. The Good Shepherd calls his sheep by name, and you know my name as well, you speak it, you call me home by it. I bless you, Light, because you do not shine into my night from outside, but inhabited the darkness from within until it became dawn. I praise you, victorious King, because your triumph moves into my morning too.
I praise you, because you are the breath I received this morning and did not notice. I magnify you, Comforter, because you are there in the depths of unspoken anxiety, and you shape it into prayer when even the words will not come to me. I praise you, living Fire, because you can kindle even what seems to have gone cold within me, and you carry warmth into the frozen mornings. I bless you, life-giving Spirit, because it is from you that I can say at all: Rabbouni, my Teacher.
I praise you, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one living love in three radiances. I magnify you, because you are not a perfection closed in on itself, but love pouring outward, which calls me by name and draws me to yourself. May yours be the first and last word of this morning. To you be glory in the quiet of my room, to you in the noise of the day, to you even when by evening I grow tired. I praise you, because you are, and because you are with me.
Lord, good morning. Here I am, just as I am. My body is still heavy with sleep, my soul full of yesterday's remains. I give you both. The weariness that sits on my shoulders, and the air that fills my chest again: all of it is yours.
I give you the loneliness that is sometimes loudest in the morning. You know that garden where a person stands before an empty grave. Turn me around, like Mary, and call me by name, so that I may not seek the absence, but see your face. The anxiety that runs ahead into today's hours, I now lay before you. Carry it onward; for me this moment with you is enough.
I entrust to you my family, everyone I love, whether they are near today or far. Guard them with your own hand. I entrust to you my work: the tasks that wait, the decisions in which I do not see clearly, the words I will have to speak. Lead me with your Spirit, so that what I do may spring from love, and not only from duty.
Bless my encounters today. Grant that there may be in me a grain of that light I received for free, and that I may pass it on to the one who is sadder than I am today. Let every step of mine today be a quiet answer to the fact that you called first. Amen.
The heart of today's message is this song: the risen Lord calls us by name, keeps watch over us, knows our every step and every unspoken tear. As he did Mary in the garden, so he calls you too by name.
He Knows My Name
Tommy Walker · official video
▶Listen on YouTubeThe Risen One spoke your name: turn around, and you already see.
The companions of earlier mornings gather in one place. Yesterday God called you into a quiet arrival, into the rest where you belong to him. Today he speaks your name in the Easter garden.