Very Early in the Morning....

Mark 15:1-41
"Very early in the morning, the chief priests made their plans..."

I read this, and I think of priests and scribes and leaders jumping out of bed, telling their wives they didn't have time for breakfast, and scurrying out the door.....much like children running down to the Christmas tree in the living room to open presents.    Did they have trouble sleeping the night before?  Toss and turn?  Keep replaying possible comebacks and conversations in their heads?  Things they would ask Jesus?  Arguments they would make to Pilate? 

Those middle-of-the night plans are usually indicators for me that I'm obsessing about something.  I think I have control over something and can/or have to "fix" it.  The lack of peace I feel on those nights has alot to do with the sin that accompanies the obsession. Wanting to be right, proving others wrong, vindication.....

So my own experience helps me understand these men.  They were tired of Jesus questioning their authority or their leadership.  They wanted control again.  They wanted to be right and prove Jesus wrong, and they got up at the crack of dawn in order to do it.


It's a little different from the excitement of the women in Matthew 28.  Verse 1 says "At dawn" they went to the tomb. This response was FAITH.  This was LOVE.  I wonder, did they toss and turn?   Play over what they had seen in their minds again and again?  Wonder if they could've stopped it?  Changed things?   Were they beginning to put together the pieces of things Jesus had said to them yet?

The chief priests got up early out of fear.  The women went early out of faith.