Imagine Mary’s excitement at seeing Jesus. This is John’s first record of anyone seeing the Resurrected Christ. You can then imagine her difficulty in understanding why she could not hug or cling to the loved one she thought she had lost.

He opened their understanding, that they might comprehend the Scriptures. -Luke 24:45 This one little verse reveals so much to us. First, it reveals that the disciples encounter the Resurrected Jesus without understanding the Scriptures. The Scriptures are a gift to us, not a requirement necessary to know Christ.

The Resurrected Christ reveals Himself to people in some pretty peculiar ways. As you listen and try to follow His lead today, don’t downplay the small, practical things, like a hug, a phone call, a meal, money, babysitting, listening, a comment of love and appreciation, or simply being with someone.

The Resurrected Jesus now stands in the middle of the disciples for the first time. He has appeared to Mary and the men on the Emmaus road, but now He is before their eyes and they wonder if it is a ghost. They are having trouble believing their own experience.

We all know the power of a story. A story communicates. Jesus used the power of stories to teach.

Jesus has this way of saying something that seems in the beginning to be simple, and yet it can be applied at multiple levels. How do you hear?

It was crowded in the house. It seemed that the whole town crowded into Mary and Martha’s home. Those who could not fit into the house stood by the door and outside the windows. Everybody wanted to see Jesus, to hear Him teach, or to watch Him heal.

It is easy to look back on the Scriptures and with arrogance say, “If I could have seen Jesus do this or hear that, I know I would have responded differently than the disciples.” But neither you nor I can really ever know that.

Suffering is not a subject that excites most people, yet glory is something we are all interested in. The Resurrected Christ teaches us that suffering and glory are linked. Jesus did not suffer at the hands of an angry God but from an angry religious system.

Have you ever felt like Jesus forgot you? Like He left the church and locked you inside? He promised He would never leave.

On a seven-mile stretch of old, rocky, dusty road that joins Jerusalem to Emmaus, two men journeyed and talked. Nothing else was worthy of discussion in light of the last couple of days. From behind them, a man who had recently caught up with their pace asked, “What are you talking about and why does it make you so sad?”