Hope in the afternoon

There are a lot of stories about Easter. So many ways to look at what happened that day. The one story that jumped out at me this year was one where two people went home after hearing about the events of the morning - still depressed and discouraged. They had heard that others had seen the risen Christ, but they hadn't themselves. It took a visit from Christ to change their hearts.

One of the key takeaways from this passage is that we all have a story we see ourselves in. Everything we've experienced as well as our hopes, dreams, failures, and regrets make up those stories. We see what we can see. But God sees so much more. He can take our story and place it in the context of His Big Story and show us just how He can overcome evil with good. He can explain the Bible in a way that we connect and understand it and are able to see how to live in light of it.

I used this story this morning to illustrate how we can think we know a story, but at times we only know part of it.

A man and a woman had been married for more than 60 years. They had shared everything. They had kept no secrets from each other except that the little old woman had a shoe box in the top of her closet that she had cautioned her husband never to open or ask her about. For all of these years, he had never thought about the box, but one day the little old woman got very sick and the doctor said she would not recover. In trying to sort out their affairs, the little old man took down the shoe box and took it to his wife's bedside. She agreed that it was time that he should know what was in the box. When he opened it, he found two crocheted dolls and a stack of money totaling $95,000. He asked her about the contents. "When we were to be married," she said, "my grandmother told me the secret of a happy marriage was to never argue. She told me that if I ever got angry with you, I should just keep quiet and crochet a doll."

The little old man was so moved; he had to fight back tears. Only two precious dolls were in the box. She had only been angry with him two times in all those years of living and loving. He almost burst with happiness. "Honey," he said "that explains the doll, but what about all of this money? Where did it come from?" "Oh, that?" she said.  "That's the money I made from selling the dolls." - from Lion Brand Yarn's website

He didn't really know, did he?

The people on the Emmaus road didn't know all the story either. All they know was that their hopes were crushed and their future looked dark. They just wanted to go home.

Then Jesus showed up and it all made sense.

We cannot let the world write our story.
We cannot assume that our view of our story is correct.
We have to seek God and enter into a deep and abiding relationship with Him where we can see our lives from His perspective.

Christ changed everything when He paid the price for our sins and provided hope beyond the grave through His resurrection.

So failure is NEVER final.

And we can have our stories rewritten by a loving God.

Let Him.