The story of Anne of Green Gables is the tale of a young girl who spends most of her time dreaming of being somewhere else, being courted by charming princes in mansions with marble halls. She prides herself on her imagination and loves to write stories. And as she grows older, she longs to have some of her stories published, but publishers keep turning down her romantic tales of far-away places.

Finally, she makes the discovery that, in her quest for romance in far-off places, she has missed the possibilities inherent in her own life. "I went looking for my ideals outside myself," she says in one climactic scene, "and discovered its not what the world holds for you, its what you bring to it. The dreams dearest to my heart are right here." Having discovered that, she abandons her attempts to write a book about far away places and writes a book of stories about her hometown, about real people and the things she knows best. And that is the work which is published and which becomes a best seller. Somehow I suspect that this part of Anne's story reflects the personal experience of Lucy Maud Montgomery, who had to learn how to recognize that the true drama and romance in life is not so far from home as she thought.

It is not just authors who make the mistake of thinking that the real action is long ago and far away. It is also people who read the stories in the Bible and think that the real action was back in biblical times, that God just doesn't work in the same way anymore, that real discipleship is a thing of the past.

The story of two disciples on the road to Emmaus is a tale of long ago; but it is also a tale of today. Two of Jesus' disciples are walking sadly along a road. Their dreams and hopes have been dashed and they are going home. They are discouraged, anxious and fearful. They meet Jesus along the way, but they fail to recognize him. I wonder whether the stress and anxiety of our lives keeps us from recognizing Jesus in our midst. Morton Kelsey once wrote about how God's presence in our lives is often hidden, although it is very real. The still, small voice of God is often obscured by busyness, anxiety and fear, and it is only through being still that we may recognize the stranger who is Christ.

The two disciples walk and talk with this stranger, and find their hearts strangely warmed. As evening comes, they invite him to stay with them through the night. But it is only when they sit down and eat with him, and he breaks the bread and gives thanks for it that they recognize who he really is.

The story has long been recognized as a reference to the fact that we meet Jesus in a very special way when we break bread together in the communion meal. But it is more than that, for it speaks of how we encounter glimpses of the eternal in everyday life, indeed in the most common things of our existence. Lucy Maud Montgomery put it well when she had Anne say, "There is a book of revelations in everyone's life." In the Lord's Supper, we recognize that God has the ability to take ordinary bread and wine and make them extraordinary. And so it is that we can live with the constant expectation that in every ordinary moment we can encounter the extraordinary. "It is not only at the communion table we can be with Christ; we can be with him at the dinner table too" according to William Barclay. "He is not only the host in his Church; he is the guest in every home."

Fay Inchfawn once wrote a poem of how she experiences Christ in the midst of the stress of being a mother and homemaker:

Sometimes, when everything goes wrong;
When days are short and nights are long;
When wash day brings so dull a sky
That not a single thing will dry.
And when the kitchen chimney smokes,
And when there's naught so "queer" as folks!
When friends deplore my faded youth,
And when the baby cuts a tooth.
While John, the baby last but one,
Clings round my skirts till day is done;
And fat, good tempered Jane is glum,
And butcher's man forgets to come.
Sometimes I say on days like these,
I get a sudden gleam of bliss.
Not on some sunny day of ease,
He'll come ... but on a day like this! [Barclay, Luke, p.296]

Perhaps you have seen one of those optical illusions in which when you first look you see a young woman, but if you look deeper you see something altogether different. The story of the road to Emmaus is the story of how two disciples sunk deep in despair and grief, looked deeper and found something completely different. They discovered hope. They discovered the ability to look deeper and find there something of magic and wonder.

Perhaps you have experienced a moment in your life when all you could see was negativity and gloom, but then you found a different way of looking at things, and discovered unexpected joy and renewed grace. Perhaps you are still looking at the glass as if it is half-empty, and need to find a way of realizing it is half full.

There is a wonderful scene in Shakespear's play King Lear in which Lear, after being forced to confront his own foolishness and madness is reunited with his beloved daughter Cordelia. And in his delight he says that it doesn't matter what happens to them, they can simply live life as it comes:

so we'll live,
and pray and sing and tell old tales and laugh
at gilded butterflies ...
And take upon's the mystery of things
As if we were God's spies: ... [V, iii, 11-13, 16-17]

It seems to me that one of the primary tasks - and joys - of the Christian life is precisely that, to take upon us the mystery of things as if we were God's spies, and to walk each road of our lives in the sure expectation that around the next bend we will meet the Risen One. Let us pray:

Stay with us, blessed stranger, for the day is far spent,
and we have not yet recognized your face in each of our sisters and brothers.
Stay with us, blessed stranger, for the day is far spent,
and we have not yet shared your bread in grace with our brothers and sisters.
Stay with us, blessed stranger, for the day is far spent,
and we have not listened to your Word in the words of our sisters and brothers.
Stay with us, blessed stranger,
because our very night becomes day
when you are there.

Seoul, Korea