Today, I am reading and commenting on  Luke 23-24.

I do not have a theme which ties my thoughts together today.  I will just comment on the things which struck me as I read.  The first thing that struck me is that one of the criminals on a cross next to Jesus may have been the only person who truly and fully believed in Him before He rose from the dead.  There, with both of them dying on the cross, he asked Jesus to remember him when He came into His kingdom.  No one else at that point thought Jesus would have a kingdom, not even His disciples.

The next thing that always strikes me when I read this passage is what the “men” who met the women at the tomb said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; He has risen.”  That is such a profound and joyful statement.  We will not find Jesus if we seek Him among the dead.  Which ties right into the last thing that I would like to write about today, something which we often gloss over.  When Jesus appeared to the group of disciples, the first thing He did was show them His hands and feet and tell them to touch Him, to know that He was physically present.  Then to prove He was not a zombie, He asked them for some food, received some boiled fish, and ate it.  I know all too many people who claim to believe Jesus, who do not believe that He genuinely rose from the dead.  Luke wanted to make sure that everyone knew two things: Jesus’ rising from the dead was not a made up story, and it was not a mass hallucination.  The first he addressed by pointing out that, from the beginning, the disciples story was that women were the first to know He had risen.  If this was a made up story, they would have reserved that honor for the men among the disciples.  The second is addressed by the fact that Jesus actually ate some food.  They gave Him some boiled fish, which was observably no longer there after He ate it.  So, the disciples did not make up the story about Jesus rising from the dead, because if they had made up the story, they would have given themselves the place of honor of being the first to know He had risen.  And they did not hallucinate His appearance among them, because He ate a piece of fish, which was actually gone once He had eaten it.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.