A Devotional as Review for the Sermon-"Transform: When Seeing Becomes Believing"
- mpenman31
- Apr 6
- 4 min read
There are seasons in life when we are looking directly at a blessing and we don't even recognize it. We see the changed circumstance, the opened door, the ended chapter, the silence, the absence, the disruption, but we do not yet see resurrection. We only see what has been taken, what has been lost, what no longer sits where it used to be.
That is where this text meets us.
Mary comes to the tomb early, while it is still dark. The darkness is not only around her. It is also within her. She is carrying grief, shock, and the heavy logic of loss. She sees the stone moved, but she cannot yet imagine good news. Her first conclusion is not hope. It is pain. Something has gone wrong. That is often how wounded hearts interpret what they see. When life has hurt us deeply, even new things can feel threatening. Change feels threatening, change portends misfortune, injury, and chaos.
How often do we live there?
We notice something shifting in our lives and assume the worst. We see a relationship changing, a plan collapsing, a familiar pattern breaking apart, and we read it through fear. We think God has abandoned us when perhaps God is unsettling what could never give us life. We think the empty place means death has won, when perhaps it is the first sign that death has been disrupted.
Then there is Peter. He does not stop at the entrance. He goes inside. He studies. He examines. He pays attention to the details. He sees order in the linen cloths (no way graverobbers would have left the graveclothes, and if they did, not folded up), intention in the scene, signs that something deeper has happened. Yet even careful investigation does not immediately become faith. There is a difference between analyzing a mystery and surrendering to it.
Many of us live here too.
We think hard. We process. We gather evidence. We replay conversations, choices, disappointments, and unanswered prayers. We want clarity before trust. We want God to explain the whole architecture of the moment before we hand over our hearts. We need more data to believe. But information and data usually work against faith, pointing to the difficulty or impossibility in the situation not the possibility and ultimate triumph. God often leaves enough evidence for there to be questions and doubt that requires faith to overcome it.
Then comes John. He sees, and he believes.
Not because every question has been answered. Not because the whole story has been explained. Not because the scriptures have fully come together in his mind. He believes because something in his relationship with Jesus allows him to perceive more deeply than the visible facts alone. He sees beyond the surface. He senses that defeat may not be defeat. He recognizes that what looks empty may actually be full of divine action.
This is the invitation of the resurrection.
Not merely to look, but to see.
Not merely to notice, but to perceive.
Not merely to gather facts, but to let the heart be opened by trust.
There are places in your life where you may still be standing at the tomb. You may be staring at what you cannot explain. You may be looking at a situation that has not yet made sense, a loss that still aches, a future you cannot yet read. And yet the resurrection whispers this tender, unsettling truth: what you see first is not always what is most true.
The stone being rolled away and the tomb being empty did not mean something bad had happened. It meant God had moved in the situation.
The tomb being empty did not mean more loss. It actually meant death had lost its grip.
The confusion of the moment was not proof that God was absent. It was evidence that God was doing something too large to be understood all at once, something too great for the human heart and mind to conceive of without faith in the impossible.
Faith is not pretending everything is clear. Faith is trusting that Jesus is alive contrary to reason and despite the preponderance of evidence that He is not .
Faith is not the death of questions. It is the refusal to let questions have the final word.
Faith is the slow, sacred moment when the soul says, “I do not understand it all yet, but I believe God is at work.”
So sit with this today:
Where have you mistaken an empty tomb for disaster?
Where have you interpreted holy disruption as loss?
Where has grief narrowed your vision?
Where has analysis delayed your surrender?
Where is Christ inviting you to trust before the full explanation arrives?
The resurrection does not merely mean Jesus rose from the dead. It means everything is different because what looks like the end to us, is not the end.
It teaches us that endings may be beginnings, that silence may be gestation, that absence may conceal divine presence, and that what looks impossible may already be turning toward life.
The tomb is empty.
The stone is rolled away.
Christ is alive.
And sometimes belief begins when the heart dares to see differently.
Reflection Questions
In what area of your life are you, like Mary, seeing through grief, fear, or disappointment and therefore struggling to recognize what God may actually be doing?
Where have you been stuck in “Peter mode,” analyzing every detail, asking every question, and yet resisting the deeper trust that faith requires?
Can you identify a time when something first felt like loss or confusion, but later revealed itself as God’s movement in your life? What does that memory teach you about your present moment?
What would it mean for you, right now, to believe that God is at work before everything makes sense and before all your questions are answered?
How might your inner life, your choices, and your witness change if you truly lived as someone who believes that resurrection power can meet even the most impossible places in your life?
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