I stretch my arm in waking fogginess. My fingers begin a walking search for my glasses. I am not a morning person. “Not” in an extreme sense. I get up at neither an insanely early hour nor late and try to make it a habit. Break the routine, and the earth will sink, the tower of Pisa may fall, and dishes may fly. At the least, the day is not off to a great start.
But, the point being not the morning, but the glasses. I need to upgrade my prescription, and I keep putting it off. Every blurry beginning of every new day, when I open God’s Word to read, I remonstrate my negligence. I start out with much squinting and close up “investigative” searching.
In my reading, coming after the Resurrection story, I’ve puzzled with my blurry scrunched up eyes, about those Biblical accounts of people who didn’t seem to recognize the Risen Christ. They were people who knew Him well, but when He stood before them alive again, it was as if their eyesight was dimmed, unseeing. While some knew Him immediately, others seemed blinded from knowing Him.
About seven miles from where Jesus died, two men walked on the road toward Emmaus. They discussed the unbelievable news that Jesus appeared to some of His followers. As they walked, Jesus came alongside them. Even as He explained the Scriptures, from Moses to the Messiah, they didn’t recognize Him. They didn’t know Jesus.
When they sat at the table, Jesus broke bread and blessed it. It was undoubtedly something Jesus had done with them before, perhaps many times, a simple ordinary act. Jesus gave bread to them and then, their eyes opened. They knew Him. (Luke 24:13-35)
John 20 tells us about Mary Magdalene who stood outside an empty tomb and wept. Grief racked her tired body. She turned to see someone standing near her.
“But she did not know that it was Jesus.” (John 20:14 ESV)
She mistook Him for a gardener.
“Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” (John 20:15 ESV)
“Jesus said to her, ‘Mary.’” (John 20:16 ESV)
Perhaps it was the way He said her name, the inflection He used, the tenderness, or the familiarity. But when He said her name, as He had many times during His time on earth, she recognized Him.
Seven disciples, having already seen the Lord alive, undoubtedly in the aftermath must have felt confused, upside down and inside out. They did what they always had done, sometimes even with Jesus. They went fishing. But they didn’t catch any fish.
“Just as day was breaking, Jesus stood on the shore; yet the disciples did not know that it was Jesus.” (John 21:4 ESV)
Jesus told them to cast their nets on the right side of the boat.
The conversation, so like another time, Jesus’ command an echo of a previous one, yet, they didn’t recognize Him. They cast their nets on the right side and 153 fish filled them so full they couldn’t haul them in.
John said to Peter, “It is the Lord!” (John 21:7 ESV)
All of these knew the Savior within mundane acts of life, as if they put on new glasses, they suddenly recognized Jesus right there before them. In places Jesus had met them before, during unremarkable recurrent day to day happenings, within regular, ordinary, doing the same old stuff, moments.
As I read these accounts, I wondered what might stand in my vision so that I do not see Him as clearly as I ought?
Perhaps Mary’s watery tears made sight impossible. Maybe the two men on the road didn’t know Him for the sheer impossibility that a dead Man now lived. And the disciples’ eyes may have been dimmed by distance. Or did He look differently in His resurrected body?
The Bible doesn’t tell us the answer, but for a Sovereign reason and intent we will never completely understand, God kept them from recognizing Him.
In my life so often what doesn’t make sense is a matter of faulty eyesight. I see the physical issue, but Jesus wants me to change lenses. And He most often accomplishes this through His Word. The Word opens my eyes to what I can’t readily see by myself.
And sometimes it reveals things I need to remove so that I can see Him clearly. It cleans off the grimy lenses more likely to see the faults of others than my own. He compels me to look well into the mirror of Truth.
His holiness fills our regular and mundane when we acknowledge Jesus in them. Share on X
I’m not prone to look for Him in those familiar, dull, ordinary day to day moments. But it’s so often there, where He has been before, that I recognize Him for Who He is now, today, and I remember He will be again. My Savior and Shepherd. My Lord and my God.
His holiness fills our regular and mundane when we acknowledge Jesus in them. He brings truth in our chaos, order to our messy relationships, and restores love when the latest hate threatens our day. He sharpens our vision so that we can see just a bit more of Him and it changes everything we see.
Don Pahl
You have drawn several significant scenes from Scripture together to confirm a marvelous truth, Sylvia. Thank you!
“Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law.” Psalm 118:18