July 18, 2021
These two walkers (of Emmaus) recognized what had been lost. They lived in this moment looking over their shoulders. No dawn. Only darkness. No light at the end of the tunnel. Only shadows and shame. They were bound in chains of “what should have been.” They lived with “can’t get there now” hopelessness. They were sad. That’s what the disguised Messiah witnessed. Notice, that sadness made them a bit irritable and incredulous. How could this stranger not know the news? Hope of Israel had been stripped down to nothing. Their replay of the events struck the chords of pain. Melodies of misery. Low tones of despair. Somber lyrics of disappointment. Death notes of short-lived dreams.
We wanted more and got less than expected. Isn’t that the scenario of this kind of shame. Shame left with the wrong feelings. They were sad. They were cynical, “art thou only a stranger in Israel…” Their trust was weakened, “we had trusted that it should have been he who should have redeemed Israel…” Jesus would tell them at one point they were “slow of heart”. This means their feelings got in the way of revelation. God had been wanting to show them something different about what happened, but they were blinded by their grief, too busy focusing on the pain to see the Promise.
The burning fire is a revelation of Him. It’s the flame of truth trying to melt the ice cold regions of the soul. It’s the lantern of eternity simmering held up in the darkest places of memory. A fire that brings the radiance of hope. A fire that impassions the believers. A fire that turns the shy and ashamed into the bold and courageous. A fire that consumes the wrong kinds of feelings; it burns up self-blame and incinerates imaginations that keep you in chains; it burns up bitterness and cremates the dead dreams that rotten your inner core. In the miracle the fire burned. In fact it was always there it just needed an awakening. When the fire burns you see things differently. When the fire burns you say things differently; your vocabulary changes; you are no longer bound to the pessimist dictionary of negative words; you speak in faith and silence fear. Listen now…
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