"...Jesus himself came up and walked along with them" (Luke 24:15). Jesus consecrates for us our heartbreaking walks and our aching journeys. How significant and wonderful that Jesus came to Cleopas and his friend. What tenderness of heart that Jesus comes to us! Cleopas and his unnamed companion were talking about their sorrow. No one but God knows who these two men were. One wasn't even accorded the distinction of a name. But Jesus quietly entered into their discouraged lives and conversation and comforted them. None can dare say or think that Jesus doesn't care about the pedestrian person! Love, with pierced feet, walks ahead to give all hope. "He seeks the society of struggling spirits, He gives His presence to sorrowing souls" (A. Raleigh). Another thought, a pastor once noted that only one of the two was named, and he suggested that the reader take his or her own place there beside Jesus and Cleopas. How beautiful! "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?'" (Luke 24:32). Our human puzzles are not solved by reason or by what seem to be rational human theories, but by what God tells us. Life can be enormously unreasonable. Every person who has any sensibilities at all has cried out a "Why?" to some unwarranted (or so it seems) work or word. When it happens, our beloved Jesus walks on our Emmaus road with us and reasons with us. He gives us a holy explanation which is wholly safe and sound. So we ask Him, "`Stay with us'...so He [comes] in to stay with [us]" (Luke 24:29). What comfort He gives. Jesus not only grants our request but becomes our Intimate, too. Certain of God's saints had moments of discouragement: Moses (Numbers 11:15), Joshua (Joshua 7:7), Elijah (1 Kings 19:4), Job (Job 10:1), David (Psalms 42:6, 69:2, 73:16, 137:1), Jeremiah (Jeremiah 15:10), and these two disciples who thought there was no hope left. But! "He lifted me out...of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand" (Psalm 40:2). |
