Year 4, Day 233: Luke 24

Theological Commentary: Click Here 

Discipleship Focus: D2, Time, Vision, Grace

• D₂ is the step in the discipleship process where God builds character as we begin to help in God's work.  Often it involves us taking a good long look at ourselves and seeing what needs to be cut away.  Affectionately, this process is referred to as “the pit of despair” because when we see ourselves for who we really are it is easy to despair and feel like we’ll never get it right, we’ll never be right, and we’ll never be useful to God.  The disciple needs time, vision, and grace to come out of the pit of despair.

I’m not sure that there are many pits of despair deeper than watching your Lord and Savior die on the cross and be buried in a tomb.  After all, human beings have a saying: Dead is dead.  It had to be pretty hard to imagine how God was going to make Jesus His Messiah from the tomb.  I feel for those disciples.  How impossible that pit must have felt!

Then God does the unthinkable.  Jesus is raised!  Hallelujah!

Jesus comes to the women and gives them grace just by coming to them in the midst of their doubts.  He gives them vision by telling them to go and proclaim.  He gives them time by not expecting them to already have it figured out.

The same is true about those disciples on the road to Emmaus.  They didn’t have it all figured out.  They didn’t know what was going on.  Jesus comes among them to help them out.  He gives them vision by explaining the scriptures to them.  He gives them grace when He reveals Himself to them in the breaking of the bread.  He gives them time by not laying upon them the expectation of having to have it already figured out.

The same is also true about the disciples back in Jerusalem.  Jesus doesn’t expect them to have it all perfectly figured out.  In fact, He encourages them to take their time in figuring it all out until the Holy Spirit comes upon them.  He gives them grace by coming among them and not abandoning them to their doubt.  He gives them vision by showing them His body so they can know that He is who they say that He is.

Jesus knows the way out of the pit of despair.  When the pit of despair comes, we need time, vision, and grace.  We need it from God.  This means we need it through the spiritual people around us through whom God speaks.  When we’re in the pit, draw close to those spiritual people and allow them to mentor you through God’s hand at work in your life.

<><