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XXX Sunday Morning The Magdala paced all night - around the small room with the tiny fire, around the house, along the wall where a dog and a cat watched her move under starlight. When the dawn started in the east, she gathered the spices and the ointments and fresh linen and started for the tomb. There were some bird sounds as pulse to her breathing but she could not hear them, only her halved heart beating in its hurt rhythms. There were flowers but she could not see them, she only glimpsed her sandaled feet moving up the path and to the tomb. She knew how it would look this morning, her mind's eye imagining the shadows of the huge rock upon the earth and she knew she would need help to roll the stone aside. She knew death; she knew despair; she knew the grave. Those were the certainties of her life. When she turned from the curved path to face the tomb, knowing how it would look, it did not look like what she had known at all. An angle of sunlight flooded the empty space for the stone had been rolled away. It took some seconds to comprehend this view because she had been so certain of what she knew. No shadows from a stone locking a body into its death. Here was an empty space filled with sunlight. Then, before she could make some sense of all of this, before she could begin rational explanations to herself, someone called her name twice. She thought it was the gardener, for many men had known her name and she turned to see who was calling her at dawn that morning. She stared into the sun, which blinded her with its brilliance. She drew one arm up to shield her eyes. Then, still blinded by the sun, she recognized Your voice.
Lord! and she had no words to describe the Wonder of that moment.
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