Overcoming fear

The final verse of Mark’s gospel as rendered in its earliest
manuscripts was perplexing and incomplete:

Trembling
and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they
were afraid. (Mark 16:8)

Eugene Peterson says, “What kind of ending is that? The resurrection has just taken place.

“The salvation of the world has been set in
motion with a few well-prepared men and women recruited as witnesses and
participants. Then, ” because they were afraid.” It is not an ending that inspires
confidence.”

What is God doing here?
How will it end? One thing He’s
doing is leaving the ending for us to write with our lives.

The book of Jonah, a book about a reluctant missionary, ends
the same way—unresolved, incomplete, mid-story.

But life is messy, the incarnation was messy, and our turn at incarnating
Jesus to the people in our lives will be messy too.

It defies a simplistic, tidy resolution.

How
will we respond? is the point.