The Stone That Couldn't Stay Put

On January 12, 2010, a 7.0 earthquake leveled Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Concrete buildings pancaked. Rubble buried entire neighborhoods. Rescue teams told families the math was brutal — after seventy-two hours, survival odds plummeted to near zero.

On day fifteen, workers pulled Darlene Etienne from the wreckage of a collapsed home. Alive. Dehydrated, barely conscious, but breathing. The French rescue team wept. Her neighbors, who had already mourned her, stood in the street screaming her name. A woman they had counted among the dead was standing before them.

That is the closest most of us will ever come to understanding what Mary Magdalene felt that Sunday morning. She walked to a tomb carrying burial spices — the ancient equivalent of a funeral arrangement. She had watched the crucifixion with her own eyes. She knew the math. Dead is dead.

But the stone was rolled away. The grave linens lay folded. And then a voice she recognized said her name.

Matthew tells us the women left that tomb with "fear and great joy" — two emotions that have no business sharing the same sentence, yet there they were, running side by side, just like those neighbors in Port-au-Prince. Because when someone you love walks out of the place where death put them, fear and joy are the only honest response.

The tomb is still empty. He is still risen. And He still calls us by name.