Posted on: 23rd April 2026

There’s a quiet, disarming moment in the resurrection story that feels uncomfortably familiar. Mary Magdalene stands outside the tomb, weeping. Her world has collapsed. The one she loved, followed, and trusted is gone. Even worse, she believes his body has been taken. In her grief, she cannot imagine anything beyond loss. And so when Jesus stands right in front of her—alive, present, speaking—she doesn’t recognise him.

It’s not that Jesus is hiding. It’s that Mary is looking for the wrong thing.

She’s expecting a corpse, not a conversation. She’s prepared for closure, not resurrection. Her expectations, shaped by sorrow and logic, leave no room for the impossible promise Jesus had already spoken: that he would rise again.

And we do the same.

How often do we come to God carrying quiet assumptions about what he can or will do? We pray, but we’re braced for disappointment. We read his promises, but filter them through past experience. We show up at the “tomb” places in our lives—those spaces marked by loss, confusion, or unanswered questions—and we look for evidence that confirms our fears rather than signs of life.

Mary’s grief is real and valid. Jesus doesn’t rush her or dismiss her tears. But he does gently interrupt her expectations. He calls her name—“Mary”—and suddenly everything shifts. Recognition dawns. What she thought was the end is, in fact, a beginning.

Sometimes the breakthrough we long for isn’t absent; it’s just unrecognised.

We often talk about “the now and the not yet” of the Kingdom of God. We hold space for mystery. We acknowledge that not every prayer is answered in the way we hope. But we also lean into the radical, hopeful truth that Jesus is alive and moving among us—still speaking, still restoring, still surprising.

The challenge is this: are we attentive to the ways he’s already present?

It might not look like we imagined. Resurrection rarely does. It might come disguised as a quiet nudge, a conversation, a moment of unexpected peace, or a small but significant shift in perspective. It might even come in the very place we’ve written off as empty.

Mary’s story invites us to loosen our grip on certainty—not the certainty of who Jesus is, but the certainty of how he must act. It calls us to bring our honest grief, our confusion, and our unmet expectations into his presence, while remaining open to being surprised.

Because Jesus is not confined to our assumptions.

He meets us in the garden, in the ordinary, in the in-between spaces where hope feels fragile. And often, he’s closer than we think—speaking our name, inviting us to see differently.

Perhaps today, the invitation is simple: to pause, to listen, and to ask, “Jesus, are you here in a way I haven’t yet recognised?”

We might find that what we thought was absence is actually presence. What we assumed was the end may be the beginning. And the promises we thought were distant are, in fact, unfolding—just not in the way we expected.