Suffering: He is with you

Suffering Blog # 2 – Hope in the Resurrection

Hopefully you and I are still close enough to the glory of Easter, that the shadow cast from its light still follows us through life as we face the challenges before us each day.

Author, Andy McQuitty, in his book, “Notes from the Valley,” relates the story, in Luke’s gospel, “On the Road to Emmaus,” to the times when we face major discouragement – those times when life in the valley is full of disappointment.

Pastor Andy, a fellow sufferer, wrote this book while suffering through the daily pain from relentless cancer treatments, as he battled against stage 4 colon cancer that spread throughout his body.   He writes,

“The difference between naïve optimism and grounded Christian hope is both monumental and monumentally misunderstood.  My friend and fellow cancer sufferer hoped he would beat the disease and spend a couple of more decades here on earth.  He made no bones about that.  But the source of his calm was not hoping for Jesus to give him more years but was found in a short phrase in the middle of a passage he often quoted from Psalm 39: ‘My hope is in you.’

Easter brings us back to the reason for our hope – we have a risen Savior, Jesus Christ.  As you face life in the valley, I want you to have hope in him too.  If he has endured death for us and then came back to life from the grave, then nothing we face as we follow him can kill hope in our hearts, because we know we will rise with him one day.  Do you have that hope?  If not, maybe you need to rethink a hopeless retreat from life just like a couple of Jesus’ followers while walking the road to Emmaus.

“Now that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem.  They were talking with each other about everything that had happened.  As they talked and discussed…Jesus came up and walked along with them; but they were kept from recognizing him.” (Luke 24:13-16)

Early that morning on the third day after Jesus’ burial, women had arrived at the tomb to find the body of Jesus missing and two angels asking, “Why do you seek the living One from among the dead?  He is not here, he is risen.”  The women reported these things to the other disciples who disbelieved them.

Then these other two began a seven mile walk home to Emmaus.  Despairing of hope, they retreated to spiritual darkness…. they were so lost in their sad and tangled thoughts that they did not recognize Jesus any more than you and me…because like them, our eyes are too accustomed to darkness and our faith not strong enough to believe in the reality of light even if it were to blaze up before us.

Emmaus is as much a state of mind as a place.  These two were trying to flee from the disappointments of Jerusalem.  Emmaus was hopeless but predictable; suffocating, but safe – it was back to a life without Jesus.  Until Jesus intervened, they were going back there to live life in the valley.  Unfortunately, this is what many of us do during times of discouragement and pain – we retreat to life without hope – without Jesus.  But in the light of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, none of us should ever again live in such a hopeless, suffocating place.

“Jesus asked them, ‘What are you discussing together as you walk along?’ They stood still, their face downcast…Jesus…was a prophet, powerful in word and deed…the chief priests and rulers handed him

 over to be sentenced to death, and they crucified him; but we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel…” (Luke 24:17-21)

Like them are you living in a valley where your hopes have been dashed?  Things had not gone the way they were supposed to.  Life was not following the script – the way things were supposed to work out. 

The saddest words in our language begin with the letter D, Disappointment, Discouragement, Depression, Doubt, Disillusionment, Defeat, Despair, Death.  It’s as if they all show up in the sad words of Cleopas and his companion, ‘We had hoped that he was the one who would ______________________.’  I want you to fill in the blank.  What is it that you’ve been hoping that Jesus would do in your life?  What effect has your unrealized dream had on your hope?  On your faith?  On your pursuit of Him?

Do you see the irony in the conversation on Emmaus Road that day?  Cleopas and his friend telling Jesus how bent out of shape they were that Jesus was dead?  Yes, the script had changed from their expectations, but in truth the play’s climax stayed the same, only better.  Jesus was alive.  Only now, having suffered on the cross and risen from the dead, he not only proved he was the Redeemer of Israel, but also the Son of God.

I love the way Barbara Taylor connects the dots.  What I have…is a God who resurrects from the dead, putting an end to it by working through it instead of around it – creating life in the midst of grief, creating love in the midst of loss, creating faith in the midst of despair – resurrecting us from our big and little deaths, showing us by example that the only road to Easter morning runs smack through Good Friday.

No, landing here in the Valley may not be what you would have scripted for your life at this point, but as your fellow suffering sojourner, I declare that the resurrection of Jesus is God’s assurance that his is better than any script you or I could conceive.  We may not like it that Good Friday is part of God’s script, but any temptation we may have toward hopeless cynicism is always premature for the simple fact that the cross did not end in death.

Read the rest of Luke 24.  As you already know, from Pastor Sam’s message Easter Sunday, Jesus instructed these two men in the Scriptures, how they pointed to what had just happened in Jerusalem.  Then at dinner Jesus allows himself to be revealed.

“…Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight.  They asked each other, ‘Were our hearts not burning within us while he talked with us on the road to Emmaus and opened the Scriptures to us?’”

It was during Cleopas and his companion’s darkest moments that they came to realize Jesus was walking with them side-by-side all along.  It’s no different for you and me.  Not only does he draw near to the broken-hearted in a special way, to bring life from all the big D’s in your life, but he promises that because he rose, one day you will rise and bask in his love forever.  There is no greater gift to be received than this.  His promise is to be at your side in your darkest moments to give you courage, peace, comfort, guidance, the strength to endure, and the promise of an eternal future with him where suffering will be no more.  Because he rose, you also will rise one day.  Fix your eyes on Jesus!  He is with you every step of your journey through the valley of the shadow of death until the day you rise into his glorious light.