Woman, why are you weeping?

The New Testament never promises the Christian a pain-free, trouble-free life. In fact, it warns us of the very opposite. Can anyone have felt this more acutely than Mary Magdalene?

Jesus had take Mary from the darkness (isn't this true for every saved soul?).
Luke 8 v2 tells us that Jesus had driven seven demons from Mary. We can only speculate about her life prior to this. Following this she had become a close follower of Jesus and one of the women who supported Jesus and his disciples out of their own means. 1 Luke 8:3

We see the topsy-turvy nature of the Kingdom of God. Mary would have been thought of little importance by the world.

She was a woman in a society that had little regard for them but worse still she had an unpleasant past.

Yet the sovereign Lord overuling in every detail of his master work of salvation pays her the magnificent compliment of being the very first to encounter the risen Christ.

First of all the angels and then Jesus himself ask Mary: "Why are you weeping?".3 John 20:13-15

The grief and inner turmoil that Mary carried was not to be ignored even at the time of the greatest human drama. Mary mattered and how Mary felt mattered.

Surely this is a clear signal to us that there are no 'small' or insignificant people in God's kingdom.

As our Father knows about the sparrows, he certainly knows about us.4 Matthew 10:31

We need to be careful how we handle a truth such as this. We live in a human centered society that is obsessed with its own self-importance.

The idea that men and women may come a poor second to a Holy God is beyond the imagination of many.

Even as Christians we talk about self-worth, self-confidence, self, self, self!

In ourselves we are of little account, yet the man or woman (like Mary) who knows Jesus discovers in him that they are precious after all.