Problem Solving After Easter

Mark 16:2, 3

Very early on the first day of the week ... they asked each other, “Who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb?”

The women are working on the wrong problem! They have yet to learn that the situation has changed. Everything has changed. Jesus has risen. His grave is empty. The stone is not the issue now.

This happens when you follow Jesus. Things change. Problems shift. Solutions appear. (Mark 16:1-8)

It occurs to me that Jesus may not need my problem solving skills as much as I think he does. What he needs is presence, attentiveness and obedience.

1. The women showed up! They had an incomplete strategy but they came anyway.
2. They listened to the angel. True they were scared witless but they did hear him out.
3. They obeyed. They did what was asked, albeit with delay and fear.

I think this is the required response: Show up, Listen, Obey. This is not to make light of the strategising, prioritising, thinking and working that leadership requires – only to put it in perspective.

What the women experienced has been my ministry experience also. I have invested energy in solving problems only to discover that God was at work in entirely different ways. Much bigger ways!

The insight for me is this: Think and plan but don’t worry. Take on the puzzle and work at the solution, but don’t become too emotionally involved in the problems or attached to my answers. Problem solve for God the way an eight year old might try to help Einstein with "relativity". Earnestly but humbly.

The words of Psalm 25:4, 5 have become a regular pray for me. “Show me your ways oh Lord, teach me your paths … my hope is in you all day long.”

Whatever the problem – home life, health, school, marketplace, environment, private life, community, church, nation, love life – Jesus is interested. He may even have an unimagined alternate adventure planned. Easter changes everything, including problem solving!

Questions

• How do you balance planning and trusting?
• What experience have you had solving the wrong problem?

On a Different Note

Here are two videos that encouraged me this Easter. Enjoy!

First, something recent

1,300 members of Faith Church celebrating the resurrection in Budapest, Hungary, April 2010
Link: http://youtu.be/i5dSIL358NM

And, something old school

Keith Green, "Easter Song" Live at The Daisy Club, 1982
Link: http://youtu.be/Z3kc1jDahU4