Who are you seeking?

It was still early as she went down the garden path.  Oh the conflicting emotions that filled her soul!  Just days before, she had seen evil personified as she watched a brutal murder take place in public, while people cheered and jeered.  Oh how she had loved that man!  The tears overflowed her eyes as she approached the cave where they had left him.  This was not a pleasant task that lay ahead of her, but it was one that she did for the one she loved, because he could not do it for himself.

As she approached the place, two strangers questioned her as to why she cried so.  How could they be so cold!  First he was killed without mercy, and now they had taken and hidden his body so that she couldn't even give him a decent burial?!  "Please! Just show me where you have put him!"  She turned to hide the torrent of tears and through them saw another man standing a few feet away.  Maybe this man knew?
He gently asked her, "Lady, why are you crying so?  Who are you seeking?"
"Please sir, I don't know if you are a groundskeeper here or what, but if you have taken that dead man from here and put him somewhere else, please tell me, and I will take him away so that he will not be a bother for you."
The man gently looked at her and then spoke her name, "Mary."

Many of us are, or have been in the place of Mary.  We have loved and been loved.  We have felt the heart-rending spasms of pain as life takes the things we cherish most, and chews them up before our eyes without mercy or any sense of justice.  Jesus asked a telling question of Mary, "Whom are you seeking?"  Mary was looking for a dead body at the end of her dreams, but in her seeking for Jesus, she found life beyond the death of her dreams.

I believe Jesus is still asking us the same question; "Whom are you seeking?"  Am I stirring through the ashes of my hopes and plans, looking for a little solace among the dead fragments?  We tried to paint the lovely picture but the brush strokes seem all wrong now, like there is no way that this could ever end beautifully anymore?  Who am I seeking?!  Is my pain now my comfort?  Is there no balm for my soul?  What AM I looking for really?

All our lives we are looking, searching for something.  And the Master knows this.  He knows how hurt we are, and how deep the pain lies.  But He also knows that in this world of pain and heartache, there is only one thing that will bring the peace we so desperate seek and need.  And that is, when we seek Him.  We lift our eyes above the shattered remains of what lies around us and look to Him, and Him alone.  It is in seeking Him, that we find new life.  And it is seeking Him, that He calls our name.