May 20 | Luke 24:44-53
DAILY READING
Luke 24:44-53
REFLECTION
Different Faces of Joy
by Mary Alice McGinnis
Last weekend I got to hang out and spend the night with my eight-year-old grandson. I was so excited to spend time with him. His mom (my daughter) was going to a birthday party for herself and one of her friends, and his dad was away for the weekend. So my grandson and I would have some wonderful one-on-one time together. However, when she was leaving for the party, my grandson started to cry. “Why can’t I go with you? I am going to miss you mom.”
I tried to assure him that we would do some fun things together, and she would be back before he knew it. But he insisted, “I just don’t understand why I can’t go too.”
To say that he was less than happy about her leaving would be an understatement. As my daughter left, she hugged him tight one last time and reassured him, “Remember how much I love you. I will be back soon.”
Today’s reading in Luke 24, we find the disciples in a similar situation. After following Jesus for three years, His disciples had visions of what life would be like now that their beloved Master, the Messiah Himself, was here. But their hopes were dashed, and their hearts crushed with despair as they watched the Savior betrayed, arrested, brutally whipped, striped and beaten, mocked, and sentence to the grueling death by crucifixion. All the while they too abandon him.
The Resurrected Jesus had appeared to them several times in the 40 days after that glorious first Easter. The women at the tomb, the disciples on the road to Emmaus, and to the disciples still hiding behind closed doors.
Luke 24:40-42 says, “When He had said this, He showed them H