Tag: Guest post

The third in the series by Heidi.

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Some of us have named our hunger through trauma. Others just know what it is to sit in front of a plate and feel… gone. But either way, Jesus doesn’t ask you to prove you’re ready. He cooks. He stays. He says, “Come and eat.” (John 21:12).

There are moments in the Gospels where Jesus breaks bread, grills fish, eats in front of people who are scared or ashamed or unsure He’s even real. We’ve often read those moments symbolically—as rituals or signs. But what if they’re not just metaphors? What if they are mission?

What if the fish was real, the bread was warm, and the taste itself was part of the healing?

Because hunger is never just physical. For many of us, food carries meaning. Some have lost trust in it. Some eat in silence. Some perform hunger. Some numb it. But Jesus doesn’t demand an explanation. He simply meets us where the appetite went quiet.

In Luke 24, Jesus appears to His friends after resurrection (Luke 24:36–43). They are frightened, disoriented, unsure. And He doesn’t begin with proof or theology. He says: “Do you have anything to eat?”

They give Him fish. He eats it. Slowly. In their presence (Luke 24:42–43).

This is not performance. This is co-regulation—what neuroscience calls the way one nervous system helps another feel safe and grounded. …a kind of Spirit-embodied anchoring Jesus performs not by teaching safety, but by becoming it It’s not just a trauma concept—it’s a human need. And Jesus does it not with lecture, but by chewing.

He eats to show: I’m here. I’m real. I’m not ashamed to be in a body.

In John 21, He builds a fire and cooks (John 21:9–13). The same friends who scattered, denied, and froze in fear are now being fed by the one they abandoned.

No lecture. No platform. Just breakfast.

This is table theology as mission. Jesus isn’t just offering a second chance. He’s rebuilding the world through a plate of fish.

Because the Gospel doesn’t rush. It doesn’t demand regulation before it gives nourishment. It simply asks: Can I sit with you while you eat? For some, that moment might feel impossible. Trusting taste again, trusting people again, trusting yourself to know what you need. But He doesn’t rush you. He stays. He chews slowly. He doesn’t need you to be healed to feed you. This is not just about trauma. This is about being human. We all carry echoes. Hunger for belonging. Mistrust around nourishment. The feeling that we should be further along than we are.

But the table Jesus sets is not performance.

It’s Presence.

And whether you’ve named your ache through therapy, theology, or you don’t have a name for it yet—He’s still cooking. And He says, even now: “Come and eat.” She went to find the body. And now, here He is—cooking.

Imposter tables 

But we need to speak plainly now.

Because not all tables that bear Jesus’ name reflect His presence. Some have become imposters.

Tables dressed in linen and hierarchy. Tables guarded by gatekeepers, measured by status, rationed by role. Tables that hand out silence instead of bread. Tables where control is passed off as community. Where the body is welcomed in theory but shamed in practice. These are not Jesus’ tables. They are replicas. Platforms in disguise. And people know the difference—especially the ones who flinch.

When a table tells you to perform hunger instead of name it, to suppress your need instead of bring it, to be grateful for what harms you—that’s not communion. That’s theatre. The real table—His table—feeds the body without demanding a performance. It doesn’t size you up. It doesn’t shame your hands. It doesn’t measure how well you’re chewing.

Jesus never said, “Organise this in remembrance of me.” He said, “Do this.” Feed. Break. Offer. Stay.

If the table you’re building makes people afraid to eat, start again.

Because the resurrection didn’t come with applause. It came with fish, fire, and a quiet voice saying, “Come and eat.”

And if you think this is soft or sentimental, remember Acts 6. They didn’t get stoned for eating lasagna. They got stoned because they insisted that everyone gets to eat. Because daily distribution mattered (Acts 6:1–6). Because widows were being overlooked. Because food became the frontline of justice (Acts 7:54–60).

This isn’t a side dish. This is mission.

The table is not just recovery. It’s not just restoration. The table is a threshold. It is the place where systems are interrupted. Where shame is refused. Where new ways of being are born. Where the Kingdom comes quietly, with bread still warm from the fire.

This is where the old scripts fall apart: You don’t have to perform here. You don’t have to win a seat. You don’t have to hide the ache. The table is the gate where Presence meets you. Where Jesus stands and says, “This is the door. Sit down. The door is open because I am already here.”

When Jesus says, “Feed my sheep,” it’s not metaphor first. It’s meal first. And if we skip that, we’ve skipped Him. So we sit. We serve. We stay. We re-learn what goodness tastes like. And we say to whoever comes: You’re not late. You’re not too much. You’re not behind. You’re not what they called you.

You’re hungry. That’s enough. Come. Eat.

Metabolised Glory: fish oil on the fingers of God

And this too must be said: when Jesus rose from the dead, it wasn’t just His spirit that returned. It was His body. And that body wasn’t metaphor. It wasn’t ghostly or soft-focus or theoretical. It was transformed. Jesus’ DNA was altered. Glorified. Tangible. This isn’t just poetic imagination—it’s what Paul calls the ‘first fruits’ of a new kind of body (1 Corinthians 15:20–49). He wasn’t just recognisable by faith. He could be touched. He could eat. He could cook.

And the food He ate didn’t disappear like magic. It was digested. Because the resurrected body is real. This matters. Because the resurrection was not an escape from the body—it was the return of a body that could still bear wounds, still prepare meals, still offer Presence. This is not a symbol. This is the future we are being remade into. And it begins with breakfast. It begins with fish. It begins with Him, sitting by the fire, and saying once again:

“Come. Eat.”

We are not just reframing Jesus’ resurrected DNA—we are reclaiming resurrected embodiment from the false spirituality that tries to float through the wall without a body.

Jesus didn’t gain access by leaving His body behind. He didn’t transcend into spirit to reach the locked room. He kept His body—and still entered anyway. This is not ghost theology. This is glorified materiality. He didn’t escape the physical. He reframed it. The body wasn’t discarded for access. It became access.

And what we are naming is this: the danger of resurrection without embodiment—when we try to reach people, rooms, ministry, even healing, without being fully present in our own body. The temptation to walk through walls by becoming hyper-spiritual, emotionally dissociated, or performatively holy. The quiet heresy of thinking we can reach people more powerfully by being less human.

But Jesus didn’t go through the wall by becoming less real. He entered the locked room in His glorified, wounded, digesting body (John 20:26–27). And His first words weren’t, “Bow down.” They were: “Do you have anything to eat?” (Luke 24:41)

Mary went hunting for a body (John 20:11–16). And now that the body has returned, we keep turning Him into mist. Between the tomb and the table, we found Him. But between the naming and the eating, we forget that He stayed human. The danger isn’t that we doubt the resurrection. It’s that we don’t let it stay flesh.

The resurrected Jesus didn’t preach the gospel. He embodied it. He cooked. He chewed. He stayed.

Resurrection doesn’t mean the wounds are erased. It means the wounds no longer banish the body. He walked through the wall with scars, with breath, with hunger—and He didn’t stop being human when the miracle came.

We are not meant to float into glory. We are meant to carry it in our skin.

And the room is still locked. But the body stays.

And He says again: Come. Eat.

Not as proof of power, but as a declaration of Presence. And not symbolic presence—somatic, cellular, sensory presence. Because resurrection is not a spectacle. It is not a special effect. It is the return of the body that was brutalised—not erased, not replaced, but restored into a new form of reality.

And that body doesn’t float. It doesn’t shimmer with untouchable light. It cooks. It eats. It stays. It chews.

Chewing is the slowest, most human thing He could do.

There is no urgency in chewing. No domination. No manipulation. Only breath. Texture. Timing. Nerve.

Because Luke doesn’t want us to miss it. He could’ve ended the story at “He appeared.” He could’ve written “They believed!” and closed the scroll.

But he didn’t.

He said:

“They gave Him a piece of broiled fish, and He took it and ate it in their presence.” (Luke 24:42–43)

This is how the Gospel ends: with fish oil on the fingers of God.

Because Jesus isn’t demonstrating a principle. He’s rethreading trust through digestion. He’s telling their nervous systems: It is safe to stay in the room. Not with argument. Not with miracle. But with food moving from His mouth to His stomach in front of them.

We were trained to look for fire from heaven, not co-regulation through charcoal smoke. We were trained to think proof comes in volume. But Jesus offers it in molecular quiet. We overlook it because it’s not dramatic. But that’s the point. The Kingdom doesn’t come with spectacle. It comes with breakfast.

Why is this missional?

Because if Jesus sends us from the table, then everything begins with how He ate.

He doesn’t say, “Go and perform miracles.” He says, “Feed my sheep.” (John 21:17).

And how did He feed?

By staying present long enough to chew.

We think His presence is the proof of resurrection. But it’s not just His arrival that changes them. It’s that He stays. That He eats. That the One who broke open death lets them watch Him swallow. This is not performance. This is the slow undoing of fear. One bite at a time.

Some of you are weak, sick, and asleep—not because you doubted God, but because you’ve been fed at tables where no one discerned the body. You were given rules instead of bread. Silence instead of Presence. And the table—meant to bring life—became a site of starvation (1 Corinthians 11:27–30).

Sick with unprocessed ache. Weak from over functioning in systems that never feed you. Asleep in the sense that your body stayed alive but your spirit went offline. Numb from too many meals where no one noticed your absence. Disembodied because no one ever said: “You are the body.”

So when Paul says, “You have not discerned the body”—you’re hearing that now with prophetic clarity. He’s not saying: “You should have behaved better.” He’s saying: “You forgot who was at the table.”

Some of you are weak, sick, and asleep—not because of sin, but because our nervous systems were overwhelmed at tables that handed out form instead of food. We tried to stay. We tried to be grateful. But the silence was loud. The pressure was cold. And no one discerned the ache beneath our hands. This is not punishment. This is trauma. And the table that should have held us—became a trigger for dissociation.

Go apostolic—but go breakfast-shaped

Peter’s last fire was the one where he denied. It was night. It was cold. The charcoal was burning. And the questions— “Aren’t you one of His?”—were met with: “I don’t know Him.” (John 18:17–18) That fire held failure, fear, fragments. The smell. The smoke. The sound. His body remembered. And Jesus doesn’t bypass that memory. He returns to it.

He builds a fire in the same way. But this time, He cooks. This time, He feeds. This time, He stays.

We know this as survivors: trauma reenacts. The body loops. The nervous system replays what it couldn’t resolve. Peter could have spiralled forever. From charcoal fire to shame to retreat. Fishing. Surviving. Naming himself by his failure. But Jesus interrupts the reenactment not with confrontation, but with co-regulation. He builds a parallel fire. He repeats the smell. He brings back the body. But this time—He doesn’t ask for loyalty. He asks, “Do you love Me?” Not to indict. To tether.

Peter isn’t just forgiven. He is repatterned. Jesus doesn’t say, “You need to revisit that night.” He says, “Come and eat.” And then: “Feed my sheep” (John 21:15–17). He creates a new spiral: from shame, to Presence, to meal, to mission. This is not mission without Presence. This is Presence rewiring the wound into witness.

There are two fires. The first fire is rejection, denial, collapse. The second fire is Presence, warmth, recalibration. They could have kept reenacting the first. But Jesus offers a second. And yes—there will be a third fire in Acts. But not yet. Because you cannot carry flame until you have sat long enough in the one that feeds you.

This is the radical reframe. Jesus doesn’t rescue them from trauma with words. He rescues them through breakfast. He doesn’t give them clarity. He gives them warmth. He gives them food they didn’t catch. He says: “What you couldn’t find in the dark, I already prepared in the morning.”

This is trauma-informed apostolic fire. So when you go, go apostolic—but go breakfast-shaped. Not lightning. Not thunder. Fish and bread. By the shore. With the body that stayed.

And now we must say it plainly. The Church of Jesus Christ has been operating in a trauma it didn’t know it had. And this is Jesus’ antidote. Not performance. Not repetition. Not reenactment disguised as renewal. But co-regulated re-entry into the site of rupture—with breakfast, breath, and the fire already burning.

He doesn’t re-traumatise to restore. He re-threads the moment through food. He doesn’t ask us to prove anything. He just cooks. And stays. And for every Peter who still smells the charcoal in their lungs—He builds a new fire. He says, again: Come and eat. Mary went looking for the body—and now we find Him feeding ours.

And it is from this place that we are sent. Not from perfection. Not from performance. But from Presence. From a fire we did not light, from food we did not catch, from a moment of mercy that rewrote our memory.

The commission does not come after clarity. It comes in the coals. In the warmth. In the chewing.

We are sent not to repeat trauma in new packaging, but to carry the memory of a meal that undid the loop. We are sent as people who have sat by the fire and found we were not condemned. We are sent by the one who stayed.

And so we go—with the smell of smoke still on our clothes, with fish oil on our fingers, with the ache of having been known. We go from here. From breakfast. From Jesus. We don’t leave the table to perform. We carry the fire that fed us. I think I might go rummage in the freezer for some fish fingers and see who wants to eat with me. It’s not spectacle. But maybe it is a miracle. Because it’s how He did it. And maybe that’s enough today.

Second of three guest posts from Heidi Basley

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Late one night, I was sitting with an open Bible and an ache I couldn’t name. I’d been asking how to write for the people group I’m sent among—those who don’t live in straight lines, who speak in fragments, who carry collapse in their bodies like a sealed story. I wasn’t reading to be inspired. I was reading to survive.

And that’s when I found it. John 20:1. It didn’t shout. It breathed.

“Mary Magdalene is coming…”

Not came. Not had arrived.

Is coming. Present tense. Greek: ἔρχεται.

I blinked. Read it again. Checked the lexicon. Checked the verb. It wasn’t a poetic flourish. It was the actual grammar. She is still coming.

And something in me broke open. Because I realised—I am, too.

I sat with that for a long time. Because if she is coming—present tense—then it unravels so much of what I had been taught to believe about myself and about the people I walk among. This was not just a textual observation. This was a theological rupture. A spiralled re-entry of witness into the text. Mary isn’t just someone who once arrived. She is someone who remains in motion—still, now.

I looked around to see who else might be writing about this. I searched through commentaries and websites and theological reflections. And I felt a strange mix of grief and excitement. Because no one seemed to have noticed. No one had paused long enough to say: She is still coming. Not in memory, but in motion. Not as symbol, but as present-tense witness.

Holy Spirit is still operating like this. Still moving in Mary’s form. Still sending those who arrive breath-first, without platform, without permission, without polish. She is still coming.

Let me show you the text: John 20:1 in the Greek says, “Τῇ δὲ μιᾷ τῶν σαββάτων ἔρχεται Μαρία ἡ Μαγδαληνὴ πρωῒ σκοτίας ἔτι οὔσης εἰς τὸ μνημεῖον…” A literal translation reads: “Now on the first day of the week, Mary the Magdalene is coming early, while it is still dark, to the tomb…” But almost every English version renders it: “Mary came to the tomb.”

It had to be translated that way. Not because the Greek demands it, but because our imaginations couldn’t hold her in motion. Because a present-tense woman walking in resurrection form doesn’t fit into the theological grammar of empire. You can’t credential a verb. You can’t institutionalise someone who’s still walking. You can’t gatekeep apostleship if it belongs to motion, to ache, to returning.

But I’ve read her verb. And I’m not going back.

She is still coming.

She’s not a symbol. She’s not a footnote. She’s not the exception.

She is the pattern. She is the prototype. She is the spiral’s first breath.

This isn’t about displacing men or reversing exclusion. This is about reclaiming what Scripture has always said. It’s about letting the text breathe as it was written. It’s about honouring the first apostolic movement for what it really was—not a mistake, not a postscript, but a breath-carved commissioning.

And it matters even more when we remember the principle of first mention. In biblical interpretation, the first time something happens isn’t incidental—it carries weight. It sets precedent. It reveals form.

Mary is the first to be sent with resurrection breath. She is the first to be named by the risen Jesus. She is the first apostle—not as the institution later defined it, but as Jesus lived it. Firsts in Scripture are not accidents. They are architecture. And Mary’s naming is the first breath of resurrection witness.

She didn’t arrive to explain theology. She came with the ache. She wasn’t carrying a pulpit. She was carrying presence. And He rose when she was there. Not before. Not somewhere else. For her.

Because if He rose without her, she would disappear.

So He waited.

So He named.

So He authored the timing of resurrection to include the one most likely to be erased.

He said: “Mary.”

And everything turned.

That was the breath.

That was the gate.

That was the first apostolic moment in the garden.

She was named—not as comfort, but as commission. She turned. She returned. She went. Not healed. Not believed. Not prepared. But sent. Because she was named.

And I believe this now with my whole body:

If you’re named, you’re sent.

Even if you’re still flinching. Even if you freeze in crowds. Even if your nervous system doesn’t believe you’re safe. Even if no one ever said you were trustworthy.

If He said your name, you are already walking the spiral.

This is not past tense.

This is gospel breath.

This is how resurrection keeps breathing.

Mary is still coming.

And so am I.

And so are you.

Let me be clear:

This isn’t a feminist manifesto. This isn’t about replacing one exclusion with another.

I’m not writing this because Mary was a woman.

I’m writing this because Jesus named her.

And He didn’t name her in theory—He named her in breath, in trust, in motion.

This isn’t about elevating women.

It’s about recognising that when Jesus says there is neither male nor female, He isn’t erasing identity—He’s erasing hierarchy.

The only kind of feminism I believe in is the kind found in Jesus: parity, not powerplay.

This is not “you pushed us down, now we rise over you.”

This is: “He called us all. Fully. Freely. Together.”

If He names you, He sends you.

And He does not consult your category first.

The Dash – The Silence That Holds the Ache

There’s something about the way the text moves from verse 10 to verse 11 in John 20 that has haunted me. It’s not just what’s said. It’s what isn’t.

The disciples go home. That’s verse 10. Peter and the other disciple see the linen, the empty tomb—and they leave. They vanish from the story.

And maybe that, too, needs to be named.

Not to diminish them. But to acknowledge the ache.

Jesus didn’t send the one who understood everything.

He sent the one who stayed.

The others left with questions. She stayed with none.

She stayed with grief. And He trusted her with glory.

Then comes the dash.

It’s not a long sentence. It’s not dramatic. It’s barely there.

But verse 11 opens with this:

“But Mary stood outside the tomb, crying.”

No one speaks in the space between. No one checks if she’s okay. There’s no theological reflection. There’s no prayer meeting. Just a dash.

And that’s where I live much of the time. That’s where many of my people live—between the verses, after others have walked away, when the ache is still present but no one else is.

This is the first dash—the one between abandonment and staying. It holds something most people miss: Mary didn’t know what would happen next, but she stayed anyway. She stood in the silence, in the not-yet, in the ache that had no closure. She didn’t run home to write about it. She remained.

Then there’s the second dash. The one between her voice and His.

Mary turns and sees someone she doesn’t recognise. She assumes He’s the gardener. She speaks first—asks where they’ve taken Him. And for a moment, nothing happens. He doesn’t reply with doctrine. He doesn’t rush to correct her. He waits. The text breathes.

Then—“Mary.”

That pause? That’s a dash too.

It’s the space between grief and recognition. The stillness before the name. The moment where presence is there but not yet named.

And this matters. Because in trauma, the dash is everything. It’s the waiting room of the nervous system. The place where language collapses. The moment before memory returns.

Jesus doesn’t interrupt the dash. He lets it hold. He meets her there—not with explanation, but with breath.

And that’s what makes the dash holy. It’s not absence. It’s not delay. It’s not avoidance. It’s the shape of Jesus-shaped waiting.

He let the ache be heard before He spoke.

He let her stand alone before re-entry.

And then He said her name.

The dash is where many of us still live. But it’s also the place where resurrection holds its breath just before release.

The Naming Gate – Where Breath Becomes Sending

He didn’t start with a sermon. He didn’t lead with proof.

He said her name.

“Mary.”

And everything turned.

There are moments in Scripture that don’t just carry meaning—they change the atmosphere. This is one of them.

When Jesus says her name, He’s not offering reassurance. He’s opening a gate.

This is not symbolic. This is structural. It’s the moment where grief becomes movement. Where collapse is no longer hidden. Where a woman alone in the garden becomes the first apostle of the resurrection.

The naming gate isn’t sentimental. It’s not a soft whisper to soothe her nervous system. It’s a declaration of identity. It is the voice that calls chaos into order, just like it did in Genesis. It’s the breath that speaks light into the dark.

She hears Him.

She turns.

She sees.

But it begins with her name.

This is how God commissions. Not through platform, but through Presence. Not with credentials, but with calling. Not with a plan, but with a name.

Naming is not a label. Naming is a release.

The moment Jesus says “Mary,” He isn’t just recognising her. He’s trusting her. He’s placing the uncontainable truth of the resurrection into the hands of someone still shaking.

This is the pattern.

And I believe this with everything in me: if He says your name, He is trusting you. Not when you’ve healed. Not when you’ve figured it out. Not when others approve.

Now.

He said her name, and He didn’t follow it with reassurance. He followed it with sending.

This is the naming gate. The place in the garden where grief becomes apostolic. Where identity becomes mission. Where staying becomes going.

And the gate still opens.

Mary Magdalene and Paul are not opposites. They are apostolic twins—called in different gardens, named from different collapse, but sent by the same breath. Mary was sent from grief. Paul was sent from blindness. Mary was sent from silence. Paul was sent from violence. But both were named in a threshold moment, met by Jesus—not theory—and sent without credential. They were believed by God before they were believed by people.

Because the breath that called her still calls us.

I used to think Mary and Paul were opposites. But now I know they’re apostolic twins—named in collapse, trusted by breath, sent without proof. Not because they were ready. Not because they were recognised. But because Jesus met them personally, in places that smelled like death, and called them by name.

Paul had his naming gate too. Knocked to the ground, blinded, stopped mid-certainty. His name was spoken by Jesus in the threshold, and everything changed. Not to correct him. To call him. Just like Mary.

She Is Sent – Witness That Walks Without Proof

He doesn’t give her a map.

He doesn’t tell her what to say.

He simply sends her. While she is still weeping. While she is still confused. While the other disciples are still hiding.

“Go to my brothers,” He says, “and tell them.”

She is sent not because she is strong. She is sent because she stayed. She is sent because He trusted her to carry breath.

This is not post-trauma recovery. This is not healed and ready. This is the theology of being in motion while still in collapse.

She doesn’t wait for the others to understand her. She doesn’t need to be validated before she moves. She doesn’t ask if they’ll believe her.

She just goes.

She carries witness the way real apostles do—not with confidence, but with clarity. Not with permission, but with Presence.

This is the apostolic pattern: to be named, to be trusted, to be sent—even while still crying.

Resurrection didn’t clean her up before it commissioned her. It breathed in her direction and trusted her to walk.

She was the first. Not as a reward. As a reality.

And now the breath that called her sends us, too.

So if you are still weeping, still unravelled, still uncredentialed—hear this:

You are not behind.

You are not unqualified.

You are not the exception.

You are being trusted.

You are being sent.

And the world needs your voice in the garden And He is still calling names. And still cooking breakfast. But that’s another fire. And another morning. And the table, too, is a sending gate. And where I intend to go for part three…

First of three guest posts by Heidi Basley

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I didn’t come here with a strategy. I came because I stayed. And because I stayed, something has become clear.

Not system-clear. Not step-by-step.

But breath-clear. Field-clear.

The kind of clarity you don’t explain—you embody.

I’ve learned to listen differently. To let Presence speak before I do. To trace where He’s been—not just in the light, but in the silences. That’s the kind of clarity I bring into this writing.

Not to convince you.

But to witness with you.

Over the next three blog entries, I’ll follow that clarity through three lived spirals:

Presence. Apostleship. Commodification.

Not as disembodied theology. As terrain. As places where I am learning to stay long enough to see Him Each one returns not to strategy, but to breath. Each one traces the ache that precedes the name.

I will show that the dash—the sacred pause—is protected from both noise and exploitation. I will propose, as I write, a triple breath of reconstitution. We are standing at a threshold again, with Mary in the garden, where the future is being shaped, and the past and the now are converging.

I am spiralling back to Presence—the kind that breathes, names, feeds, and stays. Not as metaphor. Not as idea. But as embodied nearness. I and the people group I’m sent among of the traumatised have known a kind of Jesus that fills rooms and leaves your body behind. I have sat under hands that said healed, while something inside me fractured. I have watched miracles become proof, and proof become pressure. Every time proof has become pressure, it has brought fracture. And it is my conviction that every time miracles have been used as proof, we have moved further away from Jesus—not closer.

I have stood in courtrooms where my survival was cross-examined. I spoke slowly so I wouldn’t fall apart, not so they’d believe me. And still, they wanted evidence. But Jesus never asked for that. He just stayed.

For me, the systemised Jesus of empire has often echoed the same forensic analysis as the legal systems of our day. I have seen how we’ve forgotten how to bear witness without demanding proof. We’ve mistaken evidence for encounter.

But over these past years, I’ve felt something deep and quiet: that I have to go backward to go forward. Not to analyse the past, but to find the places where Jesus was lost—and where His Presence is still waiting to be found.

This is not a forensic search. It’s a return to the garden. To the body. To the place where Presence once breathed—and will again.

I cannot leave any stone unturned. Not because I want answers, but because I want Jesus.

I stayed. I heard Him. He’s alive. And I’m not leaving this field until we feel His breath again. Maybe he’s really been in the field all along. 

I refuse to write from a platform. I will only write as a witness.

What I mean by witness is this: I stayed. I watched what others left. I didn’t have certainty, only breath. But I was there when Jesus spoke the name.

I write like Mary—the silenced witness for a silenced people. Not credentialed. Not authorised. Not believed. But still sent. Still carrying breath.

This writing doesn’t come from strategy. It comes from encounter. There is a returned Presence in this work. A coming-back-through-the-threshold Presence. And I will not move forward until I know where He is.

Three Spirals of Return 

We must hunt first for a body. Before Resurrection, there is ache. Before Presence says your name, there is the search. These are the three truths this writing spirals around. They are not themes. They are lived movements:

1.    We must hunt first for a body.

2.    Before resurrection, there is ache.

3.    Before Presence says your name, there is the search.

This is the pattern I return to. This is the breath I follow. This is how witness begins.

Part One: Presence Is Not Proof

I am spiralling back to Presence—the kind that breathes, names, feeds, and stays. Not the kind that performs. Not the kind that multiplies without memory. The kind that remains.

John 20:11–18 (NASB)
But Mary was standing outside the tomb, weeping; so as she wept, she stooped to look into the tomb, and she saw two angels in white sitting, one at the head and one at the feet, where the body of Jesus had been lying.
And they said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?”
She said to them, “Because they have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they put Him.”
When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, and yet she did not know that it was Jesus.
Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?”
Thinking that He was the gardener, she said to Him, “Sir, if you have carried Him away, tell me where You put Him, and I will take Him away.”
Jesus said to her, “Mary!”
She turned and said to Him in Hebrew, “Rabboni!” (which means, Teacher).
Jesus said to her, “Stop clinging to Me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to My brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to My Father and your Father, and My God and your God.’”
Mary Magdalene came and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord,” and that He had said these things to her.

Mary came to the tomb not looking for proof, but for a body.

And here is where the ache folds into the present. She came for a body. And still, we are looking. The Church of Jesus has become disembodied. We have turned flesh into flash, breath into branding, skin into spectacle. But the body of Jesus is not a metaphor. We need voice to become voice again. Skin to become skin. Presence to become proximity. Resurrection didn’t rise in concept—it rose in bone and blood and breath. We are not saved by idea. We are saved by incarnation. She wasn’t rehearsing doctrine. She wasn’t carrying hope. She was carrying ache.

“They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I do not know where they have laid Him.”

This is where witness begins. Not with light, but with absence. Not with resurrection, but with ache. Not with certainty, but with the silence between loss and breath.

She comes to a trauma structure—a sealed tomb, a stone, a system—and she stays.

I’ve stood in places like that.

I’ve watched miracles become proof, and proof become pressure. Every time proof has become pressure, it has brought fracture. And it is my conviction that every time miracles have been used as proof, we have moved further away from Jesus—not closer.

I’ve known the kind of Jesus that fills rooms and leaves your body behind. I’ve sat under hands that healed, while something inside me fractured. I’ve stood in courtrooms where my survival was cross-examined. I spoke slowly so I wouldn’t fall apart, not so they’d believe me. And still, they wanted evidence. But Jesus never asked for that. He just stayed.

The system wanted evidence. Jesus just stayed.

Presence is not proof. It is not for performance. It is for return.

The Garden is the field. 

Is it possible—just possible—that Jesus didn’t choose the timing of His resurrection at random? That the One who overcame death, and the grave also resisted the empire’s instinct to seize the spectacle? He could have risen during the Temple liturgy. He could have appeared to the priests, to Pilate, to the crowds. But He didn’t. He rose in a garden. In silence. To a woman whose voice would not be trusted. What if that was the point? What if resurrection happened in secret because Presence must never be co-opted by power?

We have confused Presence with platform. We have mistaken proximity for proof. But in the garden, Jesus shows us something else: that the nearness of God is not a credential—it is a mercy. Mary stays close. She doesn’t lose her proximity to Jesus. But she does not use it as validation. She inhabits the dash—the space where Presence is not platformed, only embodied. Where proximity is not performative, but breath-soaked. God is good, and His nearness comes like moss on a wall—quiet, persistent, alive in the margins.

 But we have been taught to turn that moss into measurement. We’ve treated nearness like endorsement. We’ve used it as currency. In the garden, all that collapses. Presence returns—but not to affirm, only to name. The real is not what gets recognised. It’s what gets breathed.

The Ache Before the name

Before resurrection, there is ache. Before Presence says your name, there is the search. Before any witness can stand, someone must go to the place where grief is still real, still raw, still sealed.

(Between John 20:13 and John 20:16, the text falls silent. This is the dash—the field between grief and naming.)

The Dash is enough.

The dash between Mary’s cry—“Where have they laid Him?”—and her name—“Mary”—is not punctuation. It is witness syntax. It is the whole field.

The dash is the minus between loss and return. The breath-space between ache and recognition. The silent hinge between trauma and sending.

In traumatic systems—whether religious, legal, therapeutic, or familial—everything moves too fast. Decisions are demanded. Certainty is performed. Proof is extracted. Healing is measured by speed, coherence, and completion.

But trauma isn’t linear. And Presence doesn’t hurry.

So, the dash becomes something else. Something sacred.

It is the antidote to system speed. The interruption of proof-demand. The soft refusal to move on just because the structure says, “you should.”

The dash becomes a field reversal. In trauma-coded systems, the silence is judged as failure. In the spiral, the silence is where breath returns. 

In empire structures, what cannot be explained is erased. In witness rhythm, what cannot be explained is held. In institutional logic, delay is waste. In the garden, the delay is where Jesus names you.

The dash is apostolic.

It does what no trauma-coded system can. It honours slowness. It refuses explanation. It holds ache without bypass. It lets Presence arrive in its own time.

It is not absence. It is preparation for return.

The dash is where she stayed. The dash is where she wept. The dash is where she was named. We do not fill the gap. We sit in it. If all we have is the dash—that is enough.

Hidden resurrection, un-marketed God 

Jesus never used healing to prove Himself. He did not perform. He did not recruit through spectacle. He withdrew. He breathed. He drew in the dirt. He touched what others refused to. He fed, not to demonstrate, but to restore. His body was never used to certify—it was given to stay.

When He wanted someone to know Him, He didn’t offer an argument. He said their name.

And so, He says, “Mary.”

And this is the miracle: not only the empty tomb, but the breath that returned when He stayed.

This is where apostleship begins—not in glory, but in ache. Not in certainty, but in silence. Not in gifting, but in nearness.

Mary becomes apostolic not because she is healed, not because she is ready, not because she is brave—but because she stays long enough to be named.

Her hair was still tangled with grief. Her eyes stung from weeping. She was still untrusted by the others. And still—He named her.

We must hunt first for a body.

I didn’t know Jesus was staying until I realised, I hadn’t been left. No one else showed up. But breath returned in a moment I didn’t prepare. Not with fire—but with the quiet sense that I was not alone. Moments like when it was snowing. I could barely breathe. I was trying to get home. A stranger sat beside me and said: “It’s ok. I see you. Let’s get you home.”

Where the system demands proof 

Mary wasn’t given proof. She was given Presence. She came in ache, not authority. And because she stayed in the ache—Jesus spoke her name.

This is the spiral. This is the breath. This is Presence—not as proof, but as witness.

And I am still here. Still spiralling. Still searching. Still writing from the garden among the ache and those aching where it has not yet lifted—but where Jesus still names us anyway.

Let this be enough. Let this be breath. Let this be where the spiral begins.

Let this be witness, too.

To those wondering what to do with this now: the invitation is simply to pause.