Daily Devotion for April 3, 2024

 

For an audio version of this devotion, click here.

Devotion:

Read Luke 24:13-35.

Imagine overhearing the conversations of the people telling the stories of Jesus to the gospel writers! Today’s passage is one I hear being told by the witnesses to Luke in almost the reverse order! This is because Luke tells us, the readers, the end of the story first!

Luke allows our eyes to be “opened” from the beginning! Vs. 15 says, “As they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus himself came up and walked along with them.” We then know throughout the story the answer to the question they will ask in vs. 32, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?”

A thread is woven in the phrases in vs. 16, “but their eyes were kept from recognizing him,” and in vs. 31 “Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him…”. From the beginning the witnesses' eyes only saw Jesus from their own expectation of their own hopes that he would be the one to redeem Israel with an earthly kingdom.

Then, not only were their eyes opened in recognition of Jesus’ presence with them, but their eyes were opened to begin to understand the way of the Messiah. Vs. 26 says, "Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?” The Messiah’s way was the way of sacrificial love. And as they walked and heard Jesus speak along the way, their eyes were opened to the scriptures in ways that they hadn't understood until this time.

I believe that allowing the Holy Spirit to help us recognize the risen, living Christ and his ways of sacrificial love is the journey of growing in faith. This faith-growing journey in Christ increases our hope even when we cannot see the way ahead; increases our joy even in the midst of suffering; increases our peace even in times of unrest and increases our love even when the path is not easy.

Personal Worship Option:

Rev. Joel Huffstetler in his book Changed Eyes (2023) writes, "The Road to Emmaus begins in ‘darkness’, pain, and grief, but it ends in light, in the hope of restoration—a mysterious, bewildering, joyful hope. In this Easter season, over 2000 years later, we proclaim the same good news, the same hope that these followers experienced in real-time on that first Easter Day: Christ is risen!” Christ is risen, indeed! Amen.