Today’s passage is Luke 24:13-35. Disguised, Jesus joins two of his followers on the way to Emmaus talking about everything surrounding Jesus’ crucifixion. Using the Scriptures, he explains how he was the Messiah. At supper see him truly. They hurry back to the others in Jerusalem and tell them what transpired, that the Marys were right about Jesus’ resurrection.
Why does Jesus disguise himself to explain himself?
Why does he reveal himself to the two going to Emmaus instead of appearing to the disciples?
“Slow of heart”(25)
Jesus chastises his two followers of having hearts slow to believe in what the prophets said.
It’s not until Jesus breaks bread with them at supper that their eyes open to the truth of what he had expounded to them on the road to Emmaus.
Heart and eyes are connected. Without the heart, the eyes can’t see much.
First belief, then understanding.
That’s why the two men said their hearts burned within while Jesus talked to them of the Scriptures (32).
Interestingly, the saying that “Seeing is believing” contradicts this.
We feel we have to experience something before we believe it.
But true wisdom comes only when we “see with our heart”.
My heart is slow, just like the two men on the way to Emmaus.
I remember only two hymns.
One of them is “Jesus Loves Me”.
The first lines say: “Jesus loves me, this I know, For the Bible tells me so.”
This is important. Jesus loves me, not because I’ve experienced it but because God says it.
It’s the single greatest truth of life.
The more I believe it, the more I experience it.
The more my heart accepts it, the more my eyes see it, and the more my mind understands it.
Because I believe God loves me, I can believe my wife loves me.
And she can believe I love her even though I fail her every day.
Yesterday I distressed her by not remembering we had promised that my daughter would play with some little girls in our apartment.
She reminded me a couple of times and even told me the time.
I somehow had got in my head that it was all tentative.
But I took my daughter to meet them two hours early, earning my wife’s ire because the girls were still at academy.
Eventually things worked out because of God’s grace. But I’d shown my lack of trustworthiness.
I did it again today, forgetting that we had made plans to go together with my daughter to the sauna just after taking my daughter for a medical check-up.
The timing was important because my wife has arranged to meet some middle school friends for lunch.
I didn’t wake up my daughter and threw the whole schedule out.
Again, my wife was rightly angry at my lack of memory concerning things dealing with her.
What humbled me in these back-to-back events of untrustworthiness was that my wife still loved me.
She showed it. Like the men on the road to Emmaus, my heart was opened.
It was opened because God loves me, loves my wife and loves us as a couple.
He loved us first. His love sustains us and helps us understand.
Application: pray for a faster heart.
Lord, cut away my selfishness that I may serve others with your love.
