EASTER'S GARDEN

At a neighbor's home, half a block from my home, is a wonderful sidewalk

 corner display of daffodils. The  trumpeted flowers appropriately bloom around 

Easter. I was given some daffodil bulbs about a decade ago but for some reason 

they quit blooming though they share a planter with tulips that always do.

Maybe someday I'll solve that mystery!

Be encouraged by the story behind a beloved Easter hymn.
Picture yourself beside Mary Magdalene in the early morning at the Garden of Gethsemane.  You’re awash in deep grief over your Leader’s awful, undeserved, execution by crucifixion.  The least you can do is follow the customs of anointing his wrapped corpse with spices. But something—something wonderful—happened.

Fast-forward almost two thousand years to the cramped darkroom of a Philadelphia man named Austin Miles.  He’d trained to be a pharmacist but also had music training and some success having hymns published. So, giving up his pharmacist’s career at age 24, he went to work for a Christian music publishing company. Its talented founder was Adam Geibel, a German-born music genius, blinded since youth, and known for his organ-playing.  Dr. Geibel asked Miles to write a hymn text that would be “sympathetic in tone, breathing tenderness in every line; one that would bring hope to the hopeless, rest for the weary, and down pillows to dying beds.”

INSPIRED IN A DARKROOM
So one day in March 1912, Miles was seeking inspiration as he sat in his photographic darkroom where he also kept a little organ.  He took his Bible and it opened to John 20, his favorite chapter--“whether by chance or inspiration,” he later wrote, “let the reader decide. That meeting of Jesus and Mary had lost none of its power to charm.”

His recollection continued: “My hands were resting on the Bible while I stared at the light blue wall. As the light faded, I seemed to be standing at the entrance of a garden, looking down a gently winding path, shaded by olive branches.  A woman in white, with head bowed, hand clasping her throat, as if to choke back her sobs, walked slowly into the shadows.  It was Mary.  As she came to the tomb, upon which she placed her hand, she bent over to look in, and hurried away.”

Next , it seemed, he saw John and Peter looking into the tomb. When they left, Mary reappeared and wept before turning and seeing Jesus standing nearby.  Kneeling before Him, arms outstretched, she looked into His face and cried, “Rabboni!”

Miles continued: “I awakened in full light, gripping the Bible, with muscles tense and nerves vibrating. Under the inspiration of this vision I wrote as quickly as words could be formed the poem exactly as it has since appeared.  That same evening I wrote the music.”*

Along with “The Old Rugged Cross,” this song was widely sung in the Billy Sunday evangelistic campaigns, with Homer Rodeheaver as song leader.

As for Miles, biographies say nothing about whether he married and had a family. But writing Christian music became his passion and ministry. By one account, he wrote some 537 hymn texts until his death in 1946 at age 78. “In the Garden” became his most famous, placed in more than 200 hymnals. Some of his other better-known hymns: “Dwelling in Beulah Land,” “Sweeter as the Days Go By,” “I Have a Friend,” “Wide, Wide as the Ocean,” and “A New Name in Glory” (featured in a 1998 Gaither Homecoming video series).

But by far, his most famous work is the one inspired while he sat in a darkroom, about history’s life-changing, death-conquering miracle in a garden cemetery in Jerusalem.


*This account appeared in Forty Gospel Stories (George W. Sanville, 1943), and was also quoted in 101 Hymn Stories (Kenneth Osbeck, 1982), and Then Sings My Soul (Robert Morgan, 2003).

Holy tears

Oh, how the tears flowed! I was chopping up a large onion for future cooking projects. One of my cooking tricks is to divide the pieces into paper-lined muffin cups, freeze, then remove and toss the handy-sized portions into a freezer bag. That way, I only have to have a good cry from chemical irritation about one time out of five or six.

I’m not as clever in reducing the incidence of “spiritual tears.” I’m not talking about selfish, immature “I-didn’t-get-my-own-way” tears, but those poured out without shame before a holy God. There’s a reason a tissue box is next to the chair where I meet with God. It’s also why I can’t read the shortest verse in the Bible, “Jesus wept” (John 11:35) without pausing and tears welling up.

Bible teachers say Jesus wept because He knew the pain of His dear friends and how they were disappointed that He didn’t come earlier to heal Lazarus. He also wept because death, the result of Adam’s sin, had claimed Lazarus, as it had claimed millions before. He wept in full knowledge that He would soon face death. Already, the Jewish leaders were seeking His death. After the astonishing demonstration of His deity through Lazarus coming back to life, the pressure would increase. In fact, He had to essentially go undercover to a desert village (11:54) until just before Passover. That high Jewish celebration would be the week of His own death.

Fast-forward through the tears of His finals hours and death, the pained good-byes of those who loved Him. Come to the cave where friends put His body, where women have come to anoint His body according to customs. Mary Magdalene is highlighted in John’s account. She sees the stoned rolled back and can only think of body-snatching: “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!” (20:2). She runs in panic to the disciples. They race to the tomb and confirm her report. They leave, she stays, crying and crying. She’s so blinded by her tears that she doesn’t realize angels are there to give her an incredible hope. Like a broken recorder, she replays her lament, “They have taken my Lord away, and I don’t know where they have put him.” Then Christ appears. Same basic reply. She can’t see through her tears or understand through her emotions that He’s right there in front of her! Then the Voice: “Mary.”

That, she knew.

Probably more than we care to admit, there is a sobbing Mary Magdalene in all of us. We think the Lord is no longer there for us. We worry or give up. We go through the motions of a religion without the heart-burning recognition of the risen Jesus. Patiently He waits for us to dry our selfish, blinding “it-didn’t-happen-like-I-wanted-it” tears. The plan He had all along is so much better—if we’d only take off the blinders of our own preconceived ideas of what life should be.

Mary Magdalene finally got it right. She rushed to find the disciples and declared, “I have seen the Lord!” (20:18). Actually, that’s what often brings tears when I pray. It’s for others who haven’t yet “seen the Lord” through the eyes of faith. They don’t get past the tears of Friday, or the numbness of Saturday to declare, with everything in them, “He is risen! He is risen indeed.”

And I have to admit: When I join my congregation in that Easter morning declaration of His resurrection--well, tears come. Happy tears!