Three words say a lot.
“We had hoped . . .”
And they point to three more.
“But not now.”
Cleopas and his companion were walking on the road to Emmaus, a little village seven miles from Jerusalem, when they were joined by another traveler.
“What are you talking about?” he’d asked.
With heads still spinning, filled with thoughts of crucifixion, reports of empty tombs and missing bodies, and mind-boggling confusion about what it all meant, they’d responded (this is paraphrased a bit), too tired to be particularly polite, “Are you kidding? Are you the only one in Jerusalem who doesn’t know what has happened there during these crazy days? That Jesus of Nazareth was a great and powerful prophet, that he was put to death by our leaders, and now our friends are telling us about empty tombs and missing bodies and angels and . . .”
“We had hoped that he was the one sent by God to redeem Israel, but . . .”
Their words point to a death. A terrible death.
It’s worthwhile to ponder the horrors of crucifixion. But as horrible as it surely was, the physical pain paled in comparison to the literally unimaginable horror of the weight of all of the sin of humanity that our Savior carried to the grave. Only God knows how utterly terrible that was.
Cleopas and his companion did not. But they’d lived through days difficult enough. Days focused on loss and death. The death of their Lord—and the death of their dreams.
“We had hoped . . .”
Like Cleopas and his friend, we also are incapable of any but the most rudimentary understanding of the real suffering Jesus underwent for us. But the death of dreams? That we do understand.
We’d worked so hard for the business to be a “success,” and we had hoped . . .
We’d poured our hopes and dreams into human vessels, and realized many sweet dreams, some better than we’d dared to dream. But human vessels are, at best, human. For this spouse, for this child, for this dear friend, we had hoped . . . Who knows what God may yet do, but that particular dream is dead.
Sometimes we stop in the midst of the whirlwind and try to make some sense of it all. We are not blind to the joys we’ve received, God’s gifts indeed. But sometimes when we stop, and think, we realize what we’re feeling at times has a name: grief.
It’s all wrapped up in those words: “We had hoped . . .”
Read Luke 24 and you’ll find that the traveler who joined Cleopas and his companion was the risen Lord. He is the One who listens to them talk about the death of their hopes, their dreams.
And it’s the risen Lord who on Easter imparts to them new hopes, new dreams, new life.
“We had hoped . . .”
Yes, but now in the light of Easter, we find that our hopes, our dreams, are alive again. New. Bigger. Stronger. More genuine than ever before.
We had hoped. And now, our hope is new!
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Copyright 2016 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.
