What about the Stone?

What about the stone? Who will move the stone? How can we budge the stone? Ever since Friday when they saw Joseph of Arimathea roll a great stone to the door of the tomb, the women had worried about that. Their fears were heightened when the Romans came and sealed the stone to make the tomb secure.

They wanted to anoint the body of Jesus as one last act of love, which they could show Him. They made their plans on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, to buy their spices when the shops reopened that evening after sundown. But what about the stone?
They made their purchases, but it was too late to go to the tomb that Saturday. Anyway, what about the stone?

Early on Sunday morning, “Just after sunrise they were on their way to the tomb, and they asked each other, ‘Who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb?’” (Mark 16:3)

All of us have some worry about some stone that lies ahead of us. The exact shapes, sizes, and descriptions of our stones vary, but we all have them. We spend a lot of time worrying about them. The question that dogs our path every day is, “Who will roll away the stone?”

The women were still sharing their fears and worries about that stone as they hurried along the path into the garden. They rounded the corner of the pathway leading to the tomb, “But when they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away” (Mark 16:4).

God is always big enough to take care of the stone, but generally you must not expect to find the help you need with the stone until you get to the tomb. You cannot have final answers and neat solutions along the way. What you need to do is to get up early in the morning, pack your bags, and walk toward your stone in faith trusting that when you get to the point of your concern God will roll away the stone for you.

Fritz and Shirley Smith served as music evangelists for many years. They had a great tragedy in their family. Their daughter Greta was killed in an automobile accident two weeks before her high school graduation. Several months after her death, Fritz Smith gave his testimony about how God had sustained him in his grief. He said, “People often tell me, ‘I don’t believe I could stand to go through an experience like that.’” Then he added, “On May 15th, I couldn’t have stood it either, but on May 16th, the day Greta died, I had God’s grace and strength to help me.”

Don’t expect the stone to be rolled away until you get to the tomb. It is there that you need it moved, and it is there that He will move it.

If you’ve got a stone too big for you to budge, turn it over to God. He has promised to move things as big as mountains. If God had a business card, it would probably read: “God and Son—Stone Movers. We’ve been doing business with people like you for 2,000 years!”