4/4/2021 - Easter Sunday - Luke 24:41 NLT


Still they stood there in disbelief, filled with joy and wonder. Then he asked them, “Do you have anything here to eat?” Luke 24:41 NLT

I can’t help but get a picture in my mind of Satan, desperately whispering to the hearts of the disciples in that upper room ‘…who are you going to believe? Me or your lying eyes?’. In one flash of a moment, their world got turned right-side up again. All the unseen rulers of this world had been rejoicing saying to themselves and their human minions ‘We won!’. Nope.

If ever there was a picture of grief suddenly turned to joy, it is this scene in the Upper Room. The heart knows what the mind is wired to rationally reject. Joy and wonder. It is hilarious that in that stunning moment of unreality, the first words out of Jesus’ mouth were ‘got anything to eat?’. How casually he flipped them back to reality.

The world insists its own ‘truths’ are reality, and should have always been that way, and we are supposed to just get in line. Nope. But… but… we’ll get censored, cancelled, shunned, unfriended, called ugly names…maybe even be fired. It is no longer a stretch of the imagination that Believers can lose their businesses and homes in our courts or even go to prison for not falling into line.

We’ve lost. Nope. If ever there has been a time for us to show love – humble, courageous, non-judgmental love – it is today to a society shriveling into chaos, rage, and insanity. The world is safe and sane when it walks in the light of God, and has without fail always fallen into fear and shadows when it has outright rejected God. That is why it is urgent that those who love God also realize with joy that loving rather than hating and resenting those who look at us with rage and contempt need to hear the true message of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. They have been blinded by the god of this world, and out of love, we cannot remain silent.

But rather than get entangled in the controversial subjects created by the enemy that are designed to result in explosions of anger and harden everyone in their own intellectual pillboxes, we can wait on God-who-is-within to give us the words that present the resurrected Christ who is our only real object of worship and witness. I have no How-To suggestions, only that God the Holy Spirit is infinitely creative in providing personalized truths to both the giver and receiver of the Good News. Many may reject Truth, but it isn’t our responsibility to take it personally…we cannot know the final outcome of any God-appointed moment in our lives.

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