Luke 24:29-31
But they begged him to stay the night with them, since it was getting late. So he went home with them. As they sat down to eat, he took a small loaf of bread, asked God’s blessing on it, broke it, then gave it to them. Suddenly, their eyes were opened, and they recognized him. And at that moment he disappeared!
We come to the end of this long season of Lent. Forty six days we have been waiting, waiting, waiting. The evening has come and the day is now far spent. Today we open our eyes.
Can we see Jesus? We know the story. We have seen artist renderings. We have imagined the unfolding events with a quickened pulse. But there is something more to be had than imagination.
The risen Jesus is among us just as He was alongside Cleopas and his friend, walking with them, bumping shoulders, kicking pebbles, discussing the Old Testament Scriptures. But their eyes were kept from recognizing Him. How could they not see Him at whom they were directly looking?
The same question applies to us! Jesus is alive and here among us. He is walking and talking. And we feel the bump of His shoulders and see the tumbling pebbles at our feet, and still we see Him not.
It was not until Cleopas saw Jesus’ face directly behind the blessing and the breaking of the bread that his eyes were opened.
Try something. Stare hard into the blessings and the breakings that fill your life today. Behind them is Jesus, sitting with you at your table, staring back at You with deep care and great affection, blessing You with breath and a beating heart and gifts too many to count. And there He sits, unfussed, carrying the weight of all that is broken in your life, promising by His touch to somehow, someday redeem all of it.
And then He vanished from their sight. Ah, yes, but now everything else looked so different! Here then is the sign of seeing the risen Jesus. Everything else in the world becomes glazed with a hope that refuses to fade away.
Oh, to see this world in the light of seeing You first, risen Jesus.
Dialog discuss: Jesus gave a great many other signs in the presence of His disciples which are not recorded in this book. But these have been written so that you may believer that Jesus is Christ, the Son of God, and that in that faith you may have life as His disciples. John in the 20th chapter of his Gospel, Phillips Translation