She read one sentence about four years ago and it has done more damage than anything anybody has ever said to her face.
It was in a book about something else entirely, and it was not aimed at religion in particular. It said that human beings are exceptionally good at finding whatever they set out to find, and that the strength of a conviction is mostly a measure of how badly somebody wanted it before they started looking.
She thought: yes, that is true.
And then she thought: oh.
Four years.
It has not made her stop. She goes, she prays, she has not said any of this to the two people who would notice. But it sits underneath now, and it activates at particular moments, and the moments are always the good ones.
That is the cruelty of it. It does not come when things are hard. It comes when something has just happened that she would have called an answer, and the thought arrives before she has finished being grateful: of course you found that. You were looking for it.
She has stopped saying certain things out loud because of it. She used to say God gave me that verse this morning and she has not said that in about three years, and nobody has noticed, and she has never explained why.
Nobody on that walk was expecting anything
Let me agree with the sentence first, because it is largely true and pretending otherwise would end this article.
People are extremely good at finding what they went looking for. That is real, it is well established, and it is one of the most useful things anybody can know about themselves. Somebody who has never once suspected it of their own convictions has not been paying attention.
So the sentence stays. Nothing here is going to take it off you and you would not accept it if I tried.
Now hear this, and take it as settled rather than as a rebuttal: the account of that morning is not a story about people finding what they were looking for, and the text makes that obvious in the first three verses. That is not my kind reading of four years, it is what stands written at the start of Mark's sixteenth chapter, and the same Holy Spirit who preserved it has been in every one of those interrupted grateful moments with you.
Read what they were doing and what they were worrying about.
When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus' body. Very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise, they were on their way to the tomb and they asked each other, Who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb?Mark 16:1-3
They bought spices.
That is an errand. Somebody went out, chose things, carried them home, and set them down ready, in order to finish anointing a body.
And their entire problem on the walk is the stone. Not what they will find. Not whether it will be there. The logistics of getting to a body they are completely certain is inside.
So this is yours right now rather than pending a resolution of a hard sentence: the expectation in that account runs the wrong way, because the written word has them buying burial spices and worrying about a stone, and the Spirit of God is the one who kept the shopping and the worry in the record rather than tidying them into hope.
And notice what is not in those verses.
There is no vigil. Nobody is waiting for anything. There is not one line suggesting that anybody set out that morning hoping. They are three exhausted women finishing a job at dawn because the Sabbath had stopped them doing it sooner.
And the honest boundary, because this house does not overclaim. That does not prove the account is true. A story can be constructed with unexpecting witnesses precisely because it reads better, and a serious person will say so and they are entitled to. What it does is stop the particular objection you have been carrying from fitting this particular story cleanly. What is written keeps the spices and the stone, and the Holy Spirit did not need anybody hoping in order to arrive.
So hold both, and stop letting one eat the other.
The sentence in that book is true about you. You do find what you look for, sometimes, and the appropriate response to that is a bit of humility about your own certainties, which you already have in more supply than most people.
And it does not follow that everything you have found was manufactured. That is the leap the thought makes at the exact moment you are being grateful, and it makes it without evidence every single time.
You are allowed to be glad about a good thing again. That is already true rather than something to be argued into, because Scripture has three women buying spices and worrying about a stone at the very moment the thing arrives, and the Holy Spirit has never once required anybody to prove they were not hoping.
And say the thing you stopped saying.
God gave me that verse this morning. Say it to one of the two people who would notice, this week, and then say the second half you have been carrying alone for four years: and there is a thought I have been having about that sentence for a while, and I want to tell you about it. What is written is not damaged by being said aloud with a doubt beside it, and the Holy Spirit works in exactly that kind of sentence.
Because three years of not saying a small glad thing has cost you more than the sentence in that book ever did.
Declare this over yourself
Then say these out loud. Know what they stand on: this authority is not yours by nature, it is Christ's, and in Christ it has been given to you, so you speak as one representing the King and not as somebody auditing her own gratitude. Every line rests on what is already written, and it is the Holy Spirit who carries it, never the sound of your own voice. You speak under His will, never over it, and however He answers, the outcome is His.
- Suspicion that we only find what we go looking for, you are answered on this walk. Scripture has three women buying burial spices and asking each other who will roll the stone away, and there is no vigil and nobody hoping anywhere in it.
- Fear that arrives in the middle of every grateful moment, get out, in the name of Jesus. That people sometimes find what they look for has never once meant that everything found was manufactured, and the thought makes that leap without evidence every time.
- Jesus, You came to women who had gone out to finish a burial, and You have never once required anybody to arrive expecting. I am saying the small glad thing out loud again this week, and I am telling one of them about the sentence I read four years ago.
Mark 16:1-3
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