Think about a good, "summer" season of your life, figuratively speaking. A time when things were going great. The sun was shining, the weather was perfect, and everything just seemed to be going your way. Maybe it was a job promotion you were about to get that you had worked hard for years to obtain. Maybe you finally got engaged to the person you have been waiting years to find. Or, maybe you just overcame an illness or recovered from a surgery and are excited about the prospect of a healthy body once again. Whatever the case, the feeling was that there is a bright future. You could sense the light. You felt as if your day had finally come. Your hope was about to be realized.
For me that is what the disciples felt as Christ rode triumphantly into Jerusalem. Here was their King, come to redeem Israel. Their day had arrived.
Then, what happened in the followed days utterly dashed their hopes and their dreams. This was the moment they had been waiting for! Everything had been right. How did it suddenly and so inexplicably go so wrong? From sunshine and salvation to death and darkness in a matter of days. These contemporary Christians must have been dumbfounded and devastated.
Cleopas, on the road to Emmaus, voices his heartfelt disappointment, "But we trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel". Can you feel it? Everything had been perfect. He had trusted wholeheartedly in God and that trust seems to have been in vain. After all the waiting, and hoping and trusting, just when you think it is about to pay off, it seems to go south again.
Their King, the One who was supposed to redeem Israel, was gone.
This is the backdrop of that Easter Morn. But one lesson we can learn from the resurrection of Jesus Christ is that his thoughts are not our thoughts, and his ways are not our ways. Just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so his ways are higher than ours. Christ performed everything that had been prophesied and promised. But not in ways the disciples expected.
So it is with us.
When we think things are going unexpectedly and terribly wrong (when in fact, they are going terribly wrong), it may just be that God is performing His work, just as promised, but that we just don't understand it quite yet. Just as the Apostles took some time to come to understand the higher work God had worked, it may take some time for us to realize the higher work God is performing in our lives. To us, it may not make any sense whatsoever. It may be confusing. It may seem like God hasn't kept his promises. It may seem like our faith and trust in him is all in vain.
I know that it isn't. Although we don't always understand how the Lord is working in our lives, I know He is. As long as we are striving to be close to Him and do what He asks. Because of the resurrection in particular, I know that "He lives, all blessings to impart" even when we can't see or understand those blessings. I know that Jesus Christ lives!
