Weekend Thought by John Clark

Have you met unexpected people in unexpected places?

A fellow missionary was in the congregation when I was preaching in Wales. I greeted him from the pulpit and presented him to the congregation.

I saw he look puzzled and I suddenly realised it was not my friend at all, but someone just like him,

The last person the two disciples on the road to Emmaus expected to meet was Jesus. He was dead, after all. They had seen him taken down from the cross.

So when a stranger began to talk to them as they walked, the last person they imagined it could be was Jesus.

This stranger knew his Bible all right, and was familiar with the prophecies of Jesus.

He set forth the case for the resurrection of Jesus as fulfilling the scriptures and still they did not recognise him. The disciples were enthralled.

Later, they remembered that their hearts burned within them as he taught them.

At an Easter service recently, we finished with Oh Happy Day. That was something of what the two disciples felt.

An indescribable joy changed their despair into hope. C S Lewis describes a similar experience in his book Surprised by Joy – unexpected, unasked for, almost against his wishes, he met with Jesus.

A cynical, agnostic Oxford English professor was transformed into one of the greatest defenders of the Christian faith in the twentieth century.

This life-changing encounter with Jesus happened to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. It happened to C S Lewis and it has happened to countless men and women over the ages. Oh Happy Day, it happened once to me.