September 2008 | Elaine Olsen

Setting the Table for Communion (part three): A Worthy Word

September 13, 2008

Please read our focus Scripture before beginning: Luke 24:13-35.

“He said to them, ‘How foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?’ And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.’” (Luke 24:25-27).

Do you know what I love?

A human interest story. One that’s compelling and provocative and full of cutting edge drama. It will grab me every time, whether headlined on the cable news’ networks or on an internet website or splashed across the front page of the local newspaper. I’m a person who loves a catchy headline and one who will almost invariably lean in for a closer look.

Do you know what I love even more than a great human interest story?

A human interest story that is relayed to me by a live witness—a carrier of the truth as it was personally seen and, sometimes, lived out first hand. There is always an element of deeply rooted passion portrayed through an eyewitness account, allowing me a portion of an “in the moment” kind of understanding that cannot be gleaned through second-hand testimony.

I ran across one of these stories the other day. By the time I had finished reading, my heart was pounding and my tears were pouring. I clearly was in the moment as I read, understanding that I had been allowed a walk upon a small portion of sacred ground that belonged to someone I’ve never met, but someone who allowed me a window’s peek into her soul.

I love that, don’t you? Isn’t it a great privilege when we can walk away from a moment, realizing that we are better off because of the pilgrimage?

I think it’s a profound gift of God to be allowed such moments. And while there are always plenty of human interest stories to catch my attention, there are but a few that seed something further in me…something deeper and lasting, reminding me of my fond attachment to the human spirit that houses the eternal Spirit of the living God. When this happens…

I am changed for the better.

Life changed for the better for two people who took to an Emmaus road some 2000 years ago in search of some clarity. Some answers. Some thread of truth woven into the story they had just witnessed. They found the Truth. They didn’t recognize him, but they walked the better part of seven miles with him as they listened to his version of the truth.

He chided them for their lack of remembrance and asked them to recall a few prophetic things that had been said about him; things taught to them in their youth by the teachers of the Law and things taught to them in their maturity by this One who now walked alongside them in anonymity. Things about…

A serpent’s belly crawl and the heel splitting crush that would be exacted upon his head (Genesis 3:15).

A scepter that would not depart from Judah and about a donkey and a vine and robe dipped in the blood of grapes (Genesis 49:10-12).

A throne and a forever kingdom, floggings and an enduring love that would outlast the scorn of a whip and the disdain of a people (2 Samuel 7:12-14).

A virgin birth and a son named Immanuel (Isaiah 7:14).

A Wonderful Counselor, a Mighty God, an Everlasting Father, a Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6-7).

A precious cornerstone laid in Zion (Isaiah 28:16).

A tender shoot lacking beauty and majesty and summarily despised and rejected by men (Isaiah 53:2-5).

A new, inward covenant of grace to replace the old, outward law (Jeremiah 31:31-34).

A Bethlehem birth (Micah 5:2).

A Palm Sunday’s arrival (Zechariah 9:9).

A betrayal lined with thirty pieces of silver (Zechariah 11:12).

A criminal’s death (Isaiah 53:12).

A third day resurrection (Matthew 12:40; Mark 8:31; John 2:19).

A few things like that; partial and incomplete, but things I believe to be included in their conversation that day on that occasioned walk from utter desperation to renewed hope. Can you feel their pulse quicken even as you read? Can you feel yours?

You should, and here’s why.

These aren’t just idle words, my friends. These are you life (Deuteronomy 32:47). This is your history, spoken to you by an Eyewitness who was there. By One who partook of each and every occasion because “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning” (John 1:1-2).

He was in the “then” as it was happening. He is in the “now” as we are reading and recalling the faith of generations past. His Word is alive and active and accomplishing his work in us, even when we remain unaware of its effectual power. His Spirit lives in us, testifying to the truth of all that has happened, and He is reliable because of his abiding presence in all of history.

He spoke the first Word of creation’s sentence, and he will punctuate it with his blessed and eternal Amen when he so chooses. And because He Is, his story levels as the most compelling human interest story that will ever be read. We don’t have to take someone else’s word in the matter. We can simply take his. Right now. In this very moment, as we walk to the table of grace to share in fellowship with our Lord.

A table set with the Word of God is a table set for deep and lasting communion with the Creator of our hearts.

I don’t know about you, but my heart is burning within for the truth of who my God is. He is compelling. He is provocative. He is cutting edge, and he is definitely worth my leaning in for a closer look. And whenever I’m allowed a soul’s peek into the sacred understanding of my Father’s heart, I am always and eternally…

changed for the better. Thus I pray…

Keep me to your Word, Father, and stretch my mind and my heart for a deeper embrace of your truth. Teach me my spiritual history by reminding me of all that’s been said about you through Moses and the prophets and the glorious revelation of the New Testament’s scripting. Thank you for your abiding Holy Spirit who enables me to understand you more and who puts voice to the witness of the story that has become my everlasting portion and my sure and final forever. You are the greatest “read” of my life. Amen.

PS: For those of you who would like to read the “compelling story” that I spoke about above, please visit LauraLee at her blog LauraLee’s Lifesong and her post, “Remember Glory.” She is a fabulous writer, and this story is an incredible read. Shalom.

A Turn Toward the Better (part two): A Desert’s Bloom

September 11, 2008

“All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on the earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have the opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.” (Hebrews 11:13-16).

To quell the rumors…

I have NOT, in fact, climbed the heights of Mt. Nebo and taken my plunge into eternity (please refer last post). I’m still here, walking with the view of Promise in my mind and living with the truth of God’s love in my heart. I’ve heard from many of you over the past few days, and I appreciate your concern. But what I want you to know is that my last post didn’t write from a place of deep depression. Instead, I wrote it from a place of deep introspection. A point of deep conviction and with a sense of urgency that required my obedience via my pen.

Sometimes, these moments come to a soul and pulse so loudly within that, if not spoken aloud, they will bury their voice long and deep, never to sing the melody they were meant to chorus. I learned a long time ago to tend to these melodies. This was one of those occasions, and without risking the integrity of the writing, I would like to unpack it a little more for you today.

Here’s something you need to know.

I don’t climb Mt. Nebo so that I can fast forward into my next. No, I climb Mt. Nebo so that I can better live in my now. The view is breathtaking, even as it was for Moses. It reminds me that I am not home yet. That for all of the promise that can be tasted on this side of eternity, there is a greater promise yet to come.

Moses was quickly ushered into his next without time enough to linger in his lust for the now. He moved from an earthly best into God’s best in a single pause. I find this profound and revelatory and a sacred gift from God to this servant who lived his life as a desert dweller, more than he did as a promise taster. It simply was his journey to make.

As it was with Moses, so it is with me. I am a desert dweller. In fact I wrote an entire series of posts on the topic. It is not a popular view in Christian circles. Most pulpits won’t preach it, and most retreats won’t teach it. Desert living simply doesn’t package well with promotions aimed toward promise and abundance and lush and green.

I love these packages. I’ve purchased most of them. I believe in them and want more than anything to walk in them. But in my daily, I don’t. Not usually. I’ve monitored the condition of my heart for years. I’ve tended to my spiritual pilgrimage and been careful to administer the daily checklists of a Christian obedience. I live Jesus, each and every day, and I am bold enough, or perhaps just crazy enough, to admit that…

most of them walk dusty and hot and hard.

Now, before you send me your books on abundant living and on breaking free from my sands of struggle, you also need to know this.

I’m learning contentment in the desert because I believe that my life was meant to walk as such. I am a pilgrim in search of a better country—a place of perfected promise and full abundance and a pure truth that breathes lush and green. It is an incomparable glory that far outweighs the “all” of my now. Thus, my reasoning for my dusty roads and my acceptance of them accordingly.

Try as I may, I can’t shake them. They have been my portion for as long as I can remember. So here’s the deal.

I can keep trying to shake them and nearly wear myself out with the prescribed and well-intentioned gymnastics of self-help and spiritual disciplines, or I can learn to walk them in faith and with the full expectation that my temporary is seeding for me an eternity that will blow the dust from my eyes and my feet with the full force of God’s forever.

I can learn the beauty and abundance of a long and hard obedience, even in the desert. What choice levels better in the heat of a summer season?

Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God, knew what it was to walk a desert road. He lived it. His fleshly frame was cloaked with it. Like me, He was a pilgrim in search of a better country who managed to hold onto and to cherish the sacred perspective of an unseen tomorrow. He never lost sight of it. Not once, because he knew that his Father was seeding in him an eternity that would blow away the sands of our temporal once and for all.

Calvary. Easter. Forever.

A resurrection Bloom that has bled vibrant and alive and lush and green for over 2000 years. Jesus is the desert’s bloom, and thus, I can find the strength and the contentment for the dusty road I currently step.

I am a desert pilgrim. Perhaps it will be my life’s assignment. The desert may not be your portion. You may be walking in the beauty and blossoms of a Spring season. I love this about you. I celebrate this with you, and I relish in your joy. But don’t make the mistake of crying for me in my summer’s walk. God has deemed it important. He is teaching me to trust and to watch and to wait for the beauty of unseen vistas and untouched blossoms. Even as he did for Moses, he does for me.

He walks the journey alongside, whether we’re climbing the difficult mountains toward surrender, or we’re walking the glorious resurrection of such an obedience. Either way, Jesus understands the gap between things visioned and things yet to be tasted.

Either way, he is the bloom of both. In the desert and in promise.

And thus I pray,

For the mighty displays of your witness in all seasons of this journey, I thank you Lord. For being the bloom along my weary and well-worn path, I bow in humble adoration for your companioned beauty and your lasting aroma. I may never understand the fullness of my desert, but I will always endeavor to do so from your guiding watch within. Let me not balk at summer’s heat or falter in my steps toward your forever. You are good and gracious to give me this day, regardless of how it breathes. May I never discount the sacred value of the current road that we travel together. Open my eyes to see, my mind to conceive, and my heart to believe that all is living as you intended for it to live. In me. Through me. And most days, in spite of me…until my now crosses over into my next. Amen.

I haven’t forgotten our walk to Emmaus. We will return to our series in my next post. Shalom!

A Turn Toward the Better

September 9, 2008

Congrats to Joan (#13) at More God = Less Me for winning Chris Tomlin’s new CD (please email me your snail mail, so I can get it to you ASAP). Today, we pause in our study of “Setting the Table for Communion.” There is greater thought that pulses in my heart today and requires my attention. It’s a hard teaching, especially when our hearts cry out for an easy road…a quick fix to the problems of our lives. If that is what you’re after, you won’t find it here. Instead, you will walk my heart’s strain as I seek to make sense of all of the nonsense that crowds and confronts my current. If I can’t live as authentic before you and before God, then why bother? That being said, let’s get to the doing and to the digging in hopes of hearing Him somewhere within the penned thoughts, breathing his truth as only he can.

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“Then Moses climbed Mount Nebo from the plains of Moab to the top of Pisgah, across from Jericho. There the LORD showed him the whole land … Then the LORD said to him, ‘This is the land I promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob when I said, “I will give it to your descendants.” I have let you see it with your eyes, but you will not cross over into it.’ And Moses the servant of the LORD died there in Moab, as the LORD had said.” (Deuteronomy 34:1, 4-5).

Life hasn’t turned out the way that I thought it would.

I thought it would turn toward all things lovely. Instead, it turned differently. Sometimes lovely. Sometimes in stark contrast, but never quite in the direction that I thought it would. I feel the profundity of it today, as I lie upon my prayer quilt and hammer out my thoughts with God.

He understands. We’ve been here before. Perhaps, he too, shares in my disappointment. Not because his love for me breathes less as a result of my sin, but simply because he knows that my life could have lived differently. A better different, but it hasn’t. And this has been his surrendered gift to me.

A gift that allows a life to walk within the parameters of a freely chosen will. Mine, not his.

I’ve taken God up on his offer many times. Too many to count. Too awfully painful to chronicle in this moment. I don’t tell you this to warrant your sympathy. I simply offer it to you as my explanation for a life that currently lives differently than how I imagined it would live all those many years ago—when life walked young and free and full of ideals that had room to breathe and with the ample innocence to fuel their imagining.

That was then. This is now. And the life lived between innocence’s conception and innocence’s death was a vast territory of wild and reckless exploration that weeps its remembrance this day.

There are portions of the Promised Land that I will never walk on this side of eternity. Not because my Father doesn’t delight in giving me his grace-filled abundance, but rather because my sin has kept me from it. Forty-two years worth of living have authored some seasons of regrets—times in life that have been lost to the indulgence of fleshly appetites over the reasoned pursuit of holiness.

I understand this. I accept it. I know and live the ramifications of my choices everyday. This doesn’t mean that life breathes a pitiful existence for me; it would be a quick leap to live within that conclusion. No, what it means is that life simply walks different and with a full awareness that some of the dreams birthed on the front end of my existence will only find their completed rest on the backside of eternity.

Not here. Not yet, but in the Promised Land that lies just beyond these years of my desert pilgrimage.

Moses walked the territory between a promise given and its final fruition. He would never taste the milk and honey of a God-given dream, much less walk upon its soil. He would only witness it from a distance. From atop a mountain where God would open up his eyes to the wild imaginings of sacred possibility. Moses didn’t come to the mountain with the hope of God changing his mind in the matter. He’d walked with his Father long enough to reason better.

No, when Moses made the climb up Mt. Nebo that day, he did so knowing that death awaited his arrival. Moses came to the mountain to die. To witness with his eyes a final taste of earth’s best and then to witness through life’s surrender his first taste of eternity’s forever—a lasting best that far exceeds any lovely we could walk on this side of heaven.

Indeed, Moses’ life hadn’t turned out the way that he thought it would. His sin kept him from walking God’s perfect and best will. But his finish?

Well, it turned out better than he could have ever imagined. It turned out perfect and lovely and full of the wild imaginings that had followed him since his youth.

The Promised Land…forever beneath his feet.

It is the same for us, even if life isn’t walking the way that we thought that it would. There is coming a better day when all of this will be left behind and traded in for something far more wonderful than our minds and hearts can currently conceive.

If you don’t believe this—if for some reason you’re convinced that your “current” is as good as it gets and that it will breathe as similar in your “next”—then can I be so bold as to suggest that you’ve cast your faith with the wrong King?

This isn’t it, oh sleepy pilgrim. What you and I are living today isn’t the final word on our forever. This life isn’t perfectly lovely, and it certainly isn’t God’s final best. If I believed this, I would walk away in an instant and pay homage to the closest golden calf, because, quite frankly, this faith walk has been hard fought and painfully lived and deserves a final promise that exceeds my mind’s capacity for imagining.

If I could take hold of everything that God intends for me in my now, if I could capture the true pulse of a perfected good within my heart and on this side of eternity, then I’m pretty sure I would stop trying to get there. My pressing on would walk in vain. If this is as good as it gets, then I’m done because life has not turned in the direction that I thought it would.

But it will, even as it did for Moses.

One day soon, because my faith exceeds my flesh, and for all of the sins that have kept me from the fullness of God’s best in my “now,” there is none so great that will keep me from God’s best in my next.

My Promised Land—where milk and honey will be my portion and where God’s lovely will be my perfected end.

That, my friends, is what I’m after. That is the day that I am longing for, for me and for you. And until we make our final climb of surrender, may God grant us all the strength and the wisdom to walk with intention and with the promise of forever pulsing in our veins.

As always,

~elaine

Setting the Table for Communion (part two): A Worthy Boast

September 8, 2008

Please take time to read our Scripture focus for this series, Luke 24:13-34.

“As they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus himself came up and walked along with them; but they were kept from recognizing him. He asked them, ‘What are you discussing together as you walk along?’ They stood still, their faces downcast. One of them, named Cleopas, asked him, ‘Are you only a visitor to Jerusalem and do not know the things that have happened there in these day?’ ‘What things?’ he asked. ‘About Jesus of Nazareth,’ they replied.” (Luke 24:15-19).

A well-spent hour.

When was last time you spent one? How did it walk? How did it talk? What were the particulars and who was involved?

Everyday we are given twenty-four hours to spend. At least one of them should spend extraordinary—in the sowing of something worthy. In the seeding of humanity’s soil toward a good and sacred end.

Everyday, twenty-four hours. Every week, 168 opportunities to plant for God’s greater gain. And so I ask you again, when was the last time you invested wisely?

Not long ago, I lived a well-spent hour. It was with one of you, on the phone during a long drive home from a doctor’s visit. I’d been meaning to call for some time but hesitated for various reasons. Good reasons, but not great ones. So instead of companioning alongside my music for the seventy miles ahead, I decided to make the call. I’m so glad that I did. The hour flew by with the flurry of our many words.

Words about life. Words about dreams. Words about pain. Words about hope, and most importantly…

Words about Jesus and prayers spoken accordingly. A worthy boast shared between two hearts who are intricately connected by the cord of Calvary’s reach. It wasn’t just a great hour, my friends. It was a lavish investment of sacred proportion. A life-shaping, extraordinary segment of chronicled time. Not because it held a great epiphany for either one of us, but simply because our Jesus was lifted up in our few moments of conversation. And therein lies a seeded truth for all of time…past, present, and future.

Every occasion that boasts the name of Jesus is an occasion marked forever as sacred. When God is the topic of conversation…when his name takes the stage of our hearts…his presence is sure to follow—to arrive and to mediate his majesty within our midst.

He did meet with us in that hour, even as he did with the two disciples on the road to Emmaus almost 2000 years ago as they walked their questions and talked their faith. Jesus could have bypassed this moment…could have taken another road in that particular hour. After all, it was a big day for him. A resurrection day. A day of making good on a promise that was sown before the very foundation of the world. But rather than taking to the immediate applause of the stage, Jesus took to the road. Why?

Because where two or three are gathered in his name…his promise is to be among us (Matthew 16:20).

Indeed, they were gathered in his name. Not fully understanding all that had happened. Not fully connecting the dots between the stirrings and the wonderings and the speculation of things to come. Still and yet, they talked. They didn’t dismiss their heart’s pause. They put voice to their thoughts, and in doing so, they entreated the heart of their Savior.

This is a teaching that certainly warrants our attention this day as we continue to set our tables for communion with the Father.

If deep communion with Jesus is to be tasted, then boasting in his name is a certain invitation that will always draw his sacred participation.

When was the last time that you invested accordingly?

We are a people of many words, unafraid to put voice to our lofty ideals and our superior thinking and our emotions that almost always rally to the stage, regardless of their intent. We litter our conversations with talk about…

Marriage.
Children.
The lack of either.
Television shows.
Trends.
People…both of the normal and perceived strange variety.
Headlines.
Diets.
Exercise.
Habits.
Politics.
Music.
Food.
World views.
Religions.
Concerns.
Frustrations.
Joys.
Hurts.
_____________________,

All potentially worthy topics for discussion. Potentially. But if we were to carefully examine our words with the scrutiny of an unseen focus—a sacred gaze into the eternal value of our language—how much of it would seed lasting and toward God’s good and perfect end?

I’m not after a legalistic approach to “doing life” with Jesus. I’m not after a cloistered existence that lives in isolation, apart from others so as to keep a constant focus on God. A monastic lifestyle is not my preference. But what I am after, is more meaningful participation in the life that I’ve been given.

More purposeful attention toward the “stuff” that matters. More conversations that seed toward the future. More communion with the Father that breathes eternal and toward my good and perfect end.

Well spent hours. Well spent weeks. Well spent years. A well spent life. I can live it alone with Jesus, but it won’t spend as well as when I live it alongside of you…

Doing life together with Jesus. Boasting in his name and sharing in his communion as we walk our Emmaus road to the table of grace.

Thank you, each one, for taking the time to walk this journey with me. Some of us have been “doing life” together for the last 100 posts. Today marks the occasion, and the seeds of friendship that have been sown along the way have been etched with the favor of heaven’s breath and with the communion of a Father who sees us as we walk and who worships with us as we talk–

about Him. About our soon and coming forever, when the seeds of our now will bloom lasting and beautiful and for our good and perfected end. It is my privilege to share life with you, and to pray on your behalf…

Grant us, Father, the gift of your presence as we walk this journey. As we talk of your fame and as we boast in your gracious grace that has been lavished upon us because of your limitless love. Make us ever mindful of your walk among us, and let our words be seasoned with conversations that level from such an understanding. Let them speak with eternal focus and let them breathe with the everlasting strength and power of your witness. It is my joy to “do life” with the saints here in blogland. Use my words for your glory and for their gain, for as long as I am allowed this forum. You are the only boast worthy of my words. Humbly and with reverence, I submit my pen for the journey. Amen.

Copyright © September 2008 – Elaine Olsen. All rights reserved.

~elaine

As a way of celebrating this 100th post, I will be giving away Chris Tomlin’s new CD (oh my… have you heard it?) entitled “Hello Love.” Just leave a comment, and I will select a winner prior to my next post. If you want to hear one of the songs, “I Will Rise,” click on the screen below. I love doing life with you! Shalom.

Setting the Table for Communion (part one): A Worthy Walk

September 5, 2008

Today I begin a series of posts based on Luke 24:13-34, the “Road to Emmaus”. The goal of these writings is to ponder Christ’s presence in the midst of a difficult pilgrimage and the eventual table of communion that was shared between Jesus and two of his followers. Perhaps somewhere in our pondering, we will glean some understanding as to how we, too, can taste communion with our Savior in similar measure. As I will with each post, I ask you take some time and read this portion of Scripture aloud, if you can. Feel free to leave comments along the way. May God bless the reading of his Word as only he can.

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“Now that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem.” (Luke 24:13).

I’m a bath girl. Always have been. I love the warmth of the water and the promise of soothing seclusion contained within its wet. Today is no different. In fact, perhaps more than any other day in my recent history, I need a bath—a gentle cleansing for the ache I carry within my soul. And while a bath may only salve at the temporal level, it is place of contemplation—of going deeper with God in order to receive an eternal communion that always salves lasting.

An Emmaus walk. Emmaus. A destination meaning “hot baths.”[i]

We’re headed there today and in the days to come. It is journey worth making because of what awaits us on the other side of our stepped obedience—a communion that pulses with the heat of a burning heart and with the stretching of the mind that receives the truth of Scripture’s reveal.

Jesus invites us to the table of his lavish grace each and every day. Our tendency is to pass; not because our desire isn’t present, but simply because our wills remain fixed on the immediate. The quick and easy. The five minute packaging of glory crammed into three because three is all we can afford.

Much to do. Deadlines to meet. Frazzled and furiously confined to a schedule that allows for little reflection beyond our choice of beverage at the local drive thru. We bustle about, burdened with our big agendas, and baths, quite frankly, don’t fit into our busy. Showers, perhaps, but the deep cleansing of a heated wet will have to wait for another day. For an unhurried season that allows for such a luxury.

Problem is…that day never seems to arrive. And therein lies our first point of reflection as we begin to set our tables for a sacred communion with Christ.

If deep communion with Jesus is to be tasted, then a deliberate walk to the table must be made.

We know very little about these two who were walking to Emmaus that day. We know that they were seekers of the Messiah and that one was named Cleopas. We know that they were privy to the teachings of Jesus, to the facts surrounding his death and to the discrepancies surrounding his resurrection. Perhaps they were only visitors to Jerusalem for the Passover Feast. Perhaps Emmaus was their home. But for all of the known things and the speculations therein, we do know this one thing to be true.

They were walking forward. Not backwards. Not cloistered in an upper room or locked in fear behind a closed door. No amount of weeping and sadness of heart would keep them stymied and stuck in Jerusalem. Their feet pointed toward Emmaus. They pilgrimed a deliberate journey with an unnamed purpose in mind. They couldn’t have known Who awaited them as they walked or the table that had been set on their behalf. They simply did the one thing that they knew to do.

They walked.

And so must we if we are to join our Father at his table of amazing grace and sacred communion.

Today walks differently for all of us. Some of us fully grasp the obedience of a forward walk and are enjoying the bounty of heaven’s bread and wine. Some us remain stuck behind closed doors, longing for a tabled communion but lacking the cooperation of our feet. Some of us are on the road…halfway between our fear and God’s full. Sadly, some of us still linger at the tomb…hoping for a resurrection but still waiting for truth to appear.

Truth has appeared and did appear to his followers that day, but not before they moved beyond the grave. Perhaps this is why Jesus chose to reveal himself to them before revealing himself to those locked behind a closed door. Jesus is faithful to reveal himself, especially to those who are deliberately seeking his presence.

Faith walks forward, my friends. Even a little faith. Even if questions remain and hearts tear with confusion. Faith moves toward the table of grace.

I want a burning heart and a deeper understanding of all things eternal. I need it today and in the days that calendar beyond this one. I want to sit at the table with Jesus and to partake of his bread. I want to bathe in the heated, cleansing waters of Calvary’s stream because the waters of this world cleanse at the surface, and I am in need of a deep cleaning. I think that your desire levels the same.

Sacred communion with Christ will never happen by accident. It happens through deliberate intention and through a faith that isn’t afraid to walk the unknowns of an Emmaus road because faith believes that a table awaits—a table set by God on our behalf. For our good gain. For his good purposes, and for heaven’s great and final glory.

Faith walks, and I am so thankful to be walking it with my Father and with you this day. Thus I pray…

Keep us to the road, Lord. To your Emmaus road that leads us to springs eternal and to baths that cleanse with the hot and purifying waters of your love. Let us not shrink back in our fear or in our busy, but rather give us the strength and the good sense to walk forward to the table set on our behalf. Let our hearts burn with the blessing from our sacred obedience and open up our minds to understand the truth of who you are. Humbly and with confidence, we fix our eyes toward Emmaus. Toward You. Toward home. Amen.

[i] Holman Bible Dictionary, “Emmaus” (Nashville: Holman Bible Publishers, 1991), 417.

~elaine

Monthly Archives: September 2008