Thursday in the Octave of Easter
Have you ever had an “aha!” moment? You know those moments when everything you have been wrestling with, questioning, struggling to understand, suddenly makes sense. I love those moments because of the clarity and peace I have afterwards. I think this Gospel reading is the story of an “aha” moment.
The disciples had been hurt, mourning, confused, scared and feeling lost. They were starting to put the pieces together of everything that had recently unfolded, but they still had their doubts, their confusion and their unbelief. I imagine they were questioning why they had followed Jesus, what it all meant and what to do now. And then, as an answer to their prayers, Christ himself walks among them. He shows them His wounds, He eats with them and then He helps it to all make sense. Luke even uses the line, “Then He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures.” What a gift! He allowed them to understand all that had just happened and made sense of it in terms of what they had known, pointing to the promises made in the Old Testament.
I read this and find myself feeling jealous of the apostles. I am not jealous of the turmoil and pain they had to endure but jealous of the certainty this must have filled them with. How could you not live with conviction and passion for Christ after this encounter? This fuels them to go and spread the gospel, at all costs.
This forces me to ask, where do I find my “aha” moments? What gives me the certainty that Christ is real? How do I know that His love is real and that His redemption and salvation are real? I may not be able to touch the wounds of Christ, to feed Him a baked fish, but what fuels me to go and spread the Gospel?
Over the past two weeks I have had many moments that have reminded me that Christ is real – I watched the miracle of life unfold, I watched Christ come alive in the breaking of the bread, I spent time amidst the unconditional love of family, I gathered with community to feed the hungry, I basked in the beautiful sunshine and I spent time in profound silence. In all of these moments, Christ’s love and His reality were present to me.
But two moments really spoke to me. My family had a small seder meal on Holy Thursday and through it I saw the roots of many of our traditions and practices. I felt that by sharing in a similar meal to what Christ had, the scriptures made more sense, my mind was more open to them. Then on Easter morning my son was trying to understand Easter. In an attempt to answer his unending list of questions, I tried to break this mystery down into something a 2 year old could understand – love - unending, unwavering, unquestioning, unconditional love, for all of us. A love so big that if we really, truly grasped it, our heads would explode. And then it hit me – “aha”. This is what it’s all about. Live that love. Spread that love. Be that love in the world. Then others may see you and say an “aha” of their own.
My prayer for today is that in my moments of doubt, the Lord may provide those “aha” moments and that in my times of certainty and conviction I may live in a way that helps bring those moments to others. Amen.
Amanda Grimm