For Reading and Meditation:
Luke 24:13-35
The Bible is unique in its varied penmanship. The Scriptures were written over a period of some fifteen hundred years by about forty different penmen, and yet although of such composite character, the book displays an amazing and essential unity. The most wonderful thing about the written Word is that woven through it from end to end, like a golden thread, the living Word can be observed. Nowhere can this be seen more clearly than in the account of the historic walk to Emmaus, when Luke tells us that "beginning with Moses [he could not go further back in the Bible than that!] and all the Prophets, [Christ] explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself" (v. 27). Christ in all the Scriptures! There you have the mystery of the Bible compressed into a single phrase. Imagine picking up a book written by such contributors as Shakespeare, John Donne, John Bunyan, John Locke, Isaac Newton, Jeremy Taylor, as well as many unknown writers, and then finding it is a complete biography of Sir Winston Churchill. One would turn its pages in utter amazement. Yet we discover something similar when we read the pages of our Bible. Herein lies its uniqueness. Those forty different authors did not know when they were writing that they were putting together a book that tells us as no other the full story of the Lord Jesus Christ. Whatever other faiths claim for their books - that they were inspired or dictated by God - the Bible, so all Christians believe, is God's one and only published work.
O Father, it is no surprise that so much of Jesus comes out of the Bible when so much of Him has gone into it. And the more I see of Him in its pages, the more I see there is to be seen. And the more I want to see. Thank You, my Father. Amen.