The News That Came to Galveston

On June 19, 1865, Major General Gordon Granger rode into Galveston, Texas, and read General Order Number Three aloud in the public square. The war was over. Slavery was finished. Every man, woman, and child held in bondage was free — and had been, legally, for two and a half years.

The reaction was not what you might expect. There was no immediate celebration. Witnesses described a strange, heavy silence. Freedmen and freedwomen stood motionless, some trembling, unable to speak. A few turned and simply walked away without a word. The news was too enormous to hold. Freedom had come looking for them, and they did not know what to do with it.

That is Mark 16:1-8 in living color. The women came to the tomb carrying spices for a dead man. They had rehearsed their grief. They had planned for finality. But the stone was already rolled back, the linen was empty, and a messenger in white said the most staggering words in human history: "He is risen. He is not here."

And their response? "They went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had seized them, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid."

Sometimes the goodness of God arrives so far beyond what we dared to hope that our first response is not a shout but a shudder. The silence is not doubt. It is the soul catching up to a reality too wonderful to absorb. The Risen Christ does not wait for us to find our words. He has already gone ahead.