Why Your Worst Moment Isn’t The End of the Story

Luke’s Gospel tells the story of two followers of Jesus walking away from Jerusalem on the afternoon of the resurrection. They are headed toward a small village called Emmaus, about seven miles away, carrying disappointment and confusion with every step. Everything they believed was unfolding in Jesus seems to have collapsed in a matter of days. Their teacher has been crucified, their hopes shattered, and their future suddenly unclear.

As they talk, they repeat a phrase that captures the ache beneath their grief: “We had hoped.”

That sentence holds the weight of countless human stories. We had hoped life would look different. We had hoped the relationship would last. We had hoped the plan would succeed. Their sorrow is not only about what happened to Jesus; it is about what His death appears to mean for their future. They are walking in the past tense. To them, Jesus belongs to what once was, not what still could be.

It is precisely in that moment that Jesus comes near and begins walking with them, though they do not recognize Him. This detail matters. Jesus does not wait for clarity or strong faith before approaching them. He meets them in the middle of confusion and grief. He walks beside them and listens as they rehearse their disappointment. Only after hearing their conclusion does He challenge it.

The problem is not that their circumstances are painful. The crucifixion is brutal and undeniable. The problem is the meaning they assign to those circumstances.

They have taken real events and drawn a final verdict: the story is over. Hope has failed. Jesus responds not by minimizing their grief, but by reframing it.

Luke says He begins with Moses and all the Prophets and explains how Scripture had always pointed toward a Messiah who would suffer before entering glory. The very thing they believe disqualified Jesus — His death — is the very thing that confirms His mission.

We still live inside this tension. We filter reality through our expectations, assuming that when events contradict our plans something must have gone wrong. Yet the Emmaus road suggests that what feels like interruption may be fulfillment unfolding in a way we did not anticipate. The circumstances we face are not as powerful as the conclusions we draw from them.

Pain is real, but despair grows when we mistake a chapter for the ending. Jesus meets these disciples to say, in effect, that they are reading the story too soon.

They do not recognize Him on the road; they recognize Him at the table. When they invite Him to stay, Jesus takes bread, blesses it, breaks it, and gives it to them. In that moment, their eyes are opened. The broken bread mirrors His broken body, and they see the scars in His hands. Blessing and brokenness stand together.

This moment reveals a central truth of the resurrection: suffering and glory are not opposites in God’s hands.

The wounds of Christ are not erased by victory; they are transformed by it. We assume pain signals God’s absence, yet the risen Jesus still bears marks of suffering. Sometimes God is most clearly recognized not in the absence of pain, but in the presence of grace within it.

Once they understand, everything changes. The same road that felt like an escape from disappointment becomes a path back to hope. They immediately return the seven miles to Jerusalem in the dark to tell the others. The distance has not changed, but their energy has. Hope has altered their capacity. It does not erase hardship, but it releases courage. It refuses to let the past dictate the future.

The resurrection is not simply a memory to admire; it reshapes identity. If Jesus is alive, then death is no longer the author of the final sentence.

Easter rewrites the grammar of existence, turning what looks like an ending into a continuation. The risen Christ still comes near and waits to be welcomed, revealing that the story we fear is finished is not finished at all. Like the disciples on the Emmaus road, we may think we are walking away from the center of hope when, in fact, hope is walking beside us. The resurrection does not erase grief, but it refuses to let grief have authority. It insists the story continues — and in God’s telling, hope survives.

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