I’m sorry you were out when I called
Could that note on the doorstep, that email, text message or phone, or knock at the door be Him coming to visit unawares in another person, in word of friend and stranger or as a person in need. How sad to leave Christ knocking and never open to him. How often have I have missed his coming to me?
“Behold I stand at the door and knock if anyone hears my voice and opens the door I will come in and sup with him”
After the death of Christ two disciples walked the road to Emmaus in despair, all their hopes gone, full of fears and uncertainties. But alongside side them walked a ‘Stranger’.
With their journey nearly at an end the ‘stranger’ made as if he was going further but in true oriental style they invited him in. These two on the road to Emmaus could so nearly have missed the amazing realisation that was just about to come to them had they not urged him to stay! (Luke’s Gospel 24)
Do we today hesitate to invite the ‘Stranger’, Christ, to come in and stay with us? We miss so much if we do. Christian disciples today, still have their eyes opened as they discover their Risen Lord making himself known to them, especially in the Breaking of Bread in Holy Communion
A Divine Visit
Am I ready for such a visit? Zachaeus did not think so, but Jesus said I am coming to your house…The Centurion said ‘Lord I am not worthy that you should come under my roof’. But his prayer was answered there and then. No wonder both these two men believed in Jesus.
‘I slept but my heart was awake.
Song of Songs 5:1
Listen! My beloved is knocking.’
Susan Lenzkes speaks in a poem of another ‘Martha’ who is busy serving her Lord and trying to do her best for Him yet somehow she finds herself saying:
“How did I miss Him
‘The Lover of my Soul’
Waiting with
Roses and candlelight and
Empty arms?”
As I journey through life I want to walk with Jesus and to be more conscious of him travelling with me. In the words of a modern hymn I want to ‘make of life’s brief journey a new ‘Emmaus road’.
Sarah Edward’s Testimony
In an oft quoted passage in the American Puritan, Jonathan Edward’s Published memoires he records his wife Sarah’s description of a deep experience of Christ which she had in the time of revival in 1742:
‘That night.. was the sweetest night I ever had in my life….All night I continued in a constant, clear, and lively sense of the heavenly sweetness of Christ’s excellent and transcendent love, of his nearness to me, and my dearness to him….So far as I am capable of making a comparison, I think that what I felt each minute, during the continuance of the whole time was worth more than all the comfort and pleasure which I had enjoyed in my whole life put together. It seemed to be more than my feeble frame could sustain, of that fullness of joy which is felt by those who behold the face of Christ, and share his love in the heavenly world.’
From the ‘Select Works of Jonathan Edwards’ Volume 1
Such experiences were common to many believers in the 18th century Great Awakening.
‘A divine visit is a joy to be treasured whenever we are favoured with it……….Have your hearts right with Him, and He will visit you often, until every day you shall walk with God, as Enoch did, and so turn week-days into Sabbaths, meals into sacraments, homes into temples, and earth into heaven. So be it with us! Amen.’
C.H.Spurgeon
Next Page – The Fragrance of Christ
Back to Wellspring
A Listening Heart 