Easter comes and Easter goes. Now we are heading towards the summer (hopefully a good one).
There are two of us and we are heading home. It’s about a 7 mile walk. The road is dusty. The weather is hot. Cleopas and I are confused. We can’t make head or tail of what has been happening in Jerusalem over the last few days. We were there for the Passover Festival but it was unlike anything we had witnessed before and it probably won’t ever happen again.
We were talking about this as we walked slowly home, when, out of nowhere a man joined us. He didn’t introduce himself but he walked along with us. We had no idea who he was.
Then he asked us what we were talking about.
You can imagine what we felt like.
Who is this man?
Where has he been these past few days?
Where is he going?
We just stood still. Our faces must have given the game away – we were sad, confused and lost.
“Are you the only person who doesn’t know what’s been going on in Jerusalem these past few days?”
As things turned out, when we got back home, his answer to our question was even more surprising. He simply said, “What things?”
You can imagine our reactions – we told him in no uncertain terms what had been going on with Jesus of Nazareth. We told this man who Jesus was, what had happened to him, and where he was now, although we didn’t actually know.
We got a real shock after we had told him all this. He told us we were slow to believe what the prophets had said. “Didn’t the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?”
We got more than we bargained for but it was wonderful. This man gave us the most detailed Bible study we had ever had. It certainly helped the last few miles to go more quickly.
That wasn’t the end of it.
When we got home we invited him in and we sat round a table just about to have something to eat when he took bread, said a prayer of thanks, broke it and gave it to us.
And then he was gone!
Then we realised that this man who walked home with us was the Messiah. Wow! No wonder “our hearts burned within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us.”
We didn’t waste any time. We went straight back to Jerusalem and found the disciples.
We gave our testimony – we had seen Jesus.
HE IS ALIVE
What a walk that was – ‘Jesus Himself came up and walked along with them‘
What hope that gives us today. My prayer is that Jesus will come alongside each of us and walk with us.
Do you remember this chorus:
He lives! He lives, Christ Jesus lives today;
He walks with me and talks with me, along life’s narrow way.
The Bible and Me 