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He Goes Ahead of Us

On Wednesday nights, I help with an “English as an additional language” course that our church offers. This past week my friend Juwon and I were reading from Acts chapter 2 where it says that the “believers shared everything with each other” (verse 42). We were struggling with this paragraph because I was having trouble explaining the meaning of the word “shared”. Suddenly, though, he understood and once he had that one word, the rest of the paragraph made sense. Sometimes, one word or one phrase makes all the difference.

This past week I have been thinking about a phrase from the Gospel of Mark. The angel at Jesus’ tomb says these words, “You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go and tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him as he told you’” (Mark 16:6-7).

The phrase that I have been thinking about is, “He is going ahead of you”. I know that it is completely out of context, but that is a comforting thought, isn’t it? What would it be like to know that no matter what comes, God, his Son and his Spirit have “gone ahead of us”? That not only do they walk with us now, but are leading the way into the future.

I could give you a long list of examples where God’s people find out, much to their surprise, that they are not alone and that God has “gone ahead of them”. Some of the bleakest stories come to some of the happiest endings, not because the people involved did anything, but because God was involved and working long before anyone realized it.

Sometimes it is hard to believe, but if we can become convinced that God “goes ahead of us” then we can face the future with a different attitude. Nothing catches God by surprise.

Maybe then we too can say, “Surely God was in this place and I was not aware of it” (Genesis 28:13).

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