Friday, April 1, 2005
Luke 24:32 They asked each other, "Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?"
WORD OF EASTER
It was Easter Sunday. Could anyone be sad? The Lord Jesus had risen from the dead! Yet here were a couple men as glum as could be walking the road to Emmaus after the events of the weekend. Since Jesus had died, they felt the only hope for Israel had been lost.
Then the Savior appeared to them-- yet they did not recognize him at first. The Lord Jesus proceeded to calm their fears and bring them Easter joy-- but not by immediately revealing to them who He was. He did not answer their despair with, "Look, I am alive." Instead He revealed the resurrection to them from the words of their own Scriptures. Through the word they understood and believed that the Christ would have to suffer and rise from the dead. Though they had not seen, their hearts became confident and their sorrow melted.
Perhaps Jesus worked this way with the Emmaus disciples so that we could have confidence in His Easter word too. Like those men, we do not see Jesus face to face. Easter is not proved to us by Jesus standing where we can see Him and announcing, "It is I." Rather the resurrection is revealed to us in the same way it was revealed to the two travelers-- through the word of the Lord. And that word is something we have before us every day of our lives!
