What the Morning Holds

What the Morning Holds

Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark. (John 20:1)

She came while it was still dark. Before the others. Before the word had spread. Before anyone knew what had happened or what was about to. She came in the early morning with her grief and her spices and her intention to attend to what she loved.

And the morning held more than she had expected.

I have been thinking about the particular quality of early morning — the hours before the day fills with its requirements, before the phone becomes an obligation, before the noise begins. There is something available in that time that is genuinely different from the rest of the day. A quietness that is not simply the absence of sound but the presence of an openness that later hours tend to foreclose.

Mary came to the tomb not expecting resurrection. She came to mourn. But the morning met her where she was and gave her more than she had come looking for.

This is not an instruction to become a morning person. It is an observation about availability — the posture of coming before the day fills, bringing what is honestly on your heart, and remaining open to what might be offered. Mary did not come looking for good news. She came with her loss and her faithfulness. And the morning held what she needed.

The mornings of May are long and light and early. What would it mean to arrive in them with your honest self, before the day has shaped you, and to remain for a few minutes in the quiet — attentive to what the morning might hold?