When Life Makes No Sense
What do you do when life doesn’t work out the way you expected? Some of you are thinking about a relationship. You may have expected it to go one way, but it turned another way.
For some of you, it’s family life. You have put a lot of energy into the family and things aren’t working out the way you expected. Maybe it’s a financial situation. You put money into something, hoping it would work and bring prosperity, but it looks nothing like you expected.
In our text today, the disciples were full of energy, they were full of hope, and all of a sudden, their life is shattered. Mary had already been to the tomb. No Jesus. Peter went to the tomb. No Jesus. Now two men were Journeying from Jerusalem to Emmaus.
Not much is known about these two followers of Jesus — they were evidently not among the 11 disciples. Walking along the Emmaus road, they were discussing the events of the past few days. Things while with Jesus were terrific. Now everything they expected is beginning to crash and burn.
They were full of expectation, and all of a sudden, their world came crashing down. How do you make sense of a senseless situation?
The first thing we pick up is that you don’t ever want to go backward when God is moving forward. Luke 24:13 says: “Now behold, two of them were traveling the same day to a village called Emmaus, which was seven miles from Jerusalem.”
Here were these two disciples who had been with Jesus. In their minds, the journey was over, or so it seemed after witnessing the brutal crucifixion of Jesus. They go to this road called Emmaus, and they are journeying seven miles away from Jerusalem backward.
Have you ever traveled backward only to realize that what God was doing was forward? What have you gone back to when things didn’t work out the way you expected?
Did you go back to an old way of thinking? Did you go back to an old way of being? Did you go back to an old relationship that you knew was no good for you in the first place? Why go back when God is moving forward and working ahead of you?
Secondly, don’t let your expectation cause you to miss God. (Luke 24:21 NKJV) “But we were hoping that it was He who was going to redeem Israel.”
They were hopeless because, in their opinion, God didn’t act like God. He went and got himself killed. In other words, God didn’t do the things they expected him to do on their terms. They expected the Messiah to establish an earthly kingdom, but the problem with this rule was that it was temporary.
Cleophas thought the only problems he had in his life were his circumstances. He thought that as long as he could change his political circumstances, his economic circumstances, then everything would be fine. He thought that all he needed was somebody to come and clean things up and get rid of the bad guys.
But he missed the point. Jesus came to release us from deeper bondage than that. Jesus didn’t come just to save Israel. He came to bring salvation and redemption to all mankind.
How do you act when God doesn’t meet your expectations? How do you behave when life makes no sense? I’ve discovered that in seasons of my life, when life doesn’t make sense, God is planning to do something beyond my imagination (Ephesians 3:20). Be encouraged!
Rev. Chestine Sims Jr. of White Hall is pastor of Union AME Church at Little Rock. Please join us for worship on Facebook live at 10:30 a.m. on Sunday.
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