Adult

 I don’t know what the future holds, but I know Who holds the future. — Ralph Abernathy

Be empty of worrying.
Think of who created thought!
Why do you stay in prison
When the door is so wide open?
― Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi

It’s fun to think of the what-if. Scary, but fun. It’s like, I thought this door was closed before, but here it is open just the tiniest crack. What if? ― Jenny Han

Oswald Chambers wrote, “Before God can use us greatly, he must first hurt us deeply.” Every one of us has walked the Road to Emmaus. It is the loneliest road on earth–the highway from broken dreams to the place called What Am I Going To Do Next? When we walk the Road to Emmaus–and every one of us will–here’s what we need to remember: “Finite disappointments pave the road to infinite hope.” (I have just quoted the Reverend Martin Luther King.) — Robert Petterson

Finite disappointments pave the road to infinite hope. — Martin Luther King

Songs:

• Something’s Happening Here — Buffalo Springfield (rock)
• Say Something — A Great Big World, Christina Aguilera (ballad)
• Writings on the Wall — Sam Smith (pop/ballad)
• Say Something — Justin Timberlake (pop)
• Something Just Like This — Chainsmokers & Cold Play (rock/pop)
• Cold Little Heart — Michael Kiwanuka (international)
• If — Bread (ballad)
• Even If — Mercy Me (Christian ballad)
• Way Maker — Leeland (Christian rock)

Questions to consider from journey to Emmaus:

• Who walks with you?
• Where do you walk in these times? What roads and journeys are closed off to you? Where have you gone instead?
• Who, where or what is your ‘safe space’ or sanctuary in times like these?
• What makes you turn around when you’re determined to leave something behind? Or to leave? What calls you to return?
• What has changed your mind, opened your eyes?
• What changes your focus from current events/news/headlines? What balances out that awareness?
• What happens when what you expected is overturned? What helps you make sense of the situation and adapt?
• What if love disappoints you, because it does what you didn’t expect?

For What Its Worth — Buffalo Springfield

There’s something happening here
What it is ain’t exactly clear
There’s a man with a gun over there
Telling me I got to beware

I think it’s time we stop, children, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down

There’s battle lines being drawn
Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong
Young people speaking their minds
Getting so much resistance from behind

It’s time we stop, hey, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down

What a field-day for the heat
A thousand people in the street
Singing songs and carrying signs
Mostly say, hooray for our side

It’s s time we stop, hey, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down

Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you’re always afraid
You step out of line, the man come and take you away

We better stop, hey, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down
Stop, hey, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down …

What If
 
I’m always wondering about the what-ifs, about the road not taken. ― Jenny Han
 
You’ll never get anywhere if you go about what-iffing like that. ― Roald Dahl
 
Never Kill your What Ifs, But first be Grateful for What Is. ― Wordions
 
Do you think I’ll let it go, that I’ll hide from it because you, who’s anything but a coward, is afraid of what ifs? ― Nora Roberts

Soul, if you want to learn secrets, your heart must forget about shame and dignity. You are God’s lover, yet you worry what people are saying. ― Rumi,
 
But what if I fail of my purpose here? It is but to keep the nerves at strain, to dry one’s eyes and laugh at a fall, and baffled, get up and begin again. — Robert Browning

Every day, think as you wake up, today I am fortunate to be alive, I have a precious human life, I am not going to waste it. I am going to use all my energies to develop myself, to expand my heart out to others; to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all beings. I am going to have kind thoughts towards others, I am not going to get angry or think badly about others. I am going to benefit others as much as I can. ― The Dalai Lama

But suppose God is black? What if we go to Heaven and we, all our lives, have treated the Negro as an inferior, and God is there, and we look up and He is not white? What then is our response? — Robert Kennedy

Behind each door of what-if lies an unanswerable question that unhinges an infinite Rube Goldberg machine of probabilities. The life we have is the only one we will ever know, and even that with tenuous certainty. ― Maria Popova
 
You’ll always be my favourite “What If”. ― Nitya Prakash

Coming Forth Into the Light — Suzy Kassem

I was born the day
I thought:
What is?
What was?
And
What if?

I was transformed the day
My ego shattered,
And all the superficial, material
Things that mattered
To me before,
Suddenly ceased
To matter.

I really came into being
The day I no longer cared about
What the world thought of me,
Only on my thoughts for
Changing the world.

But what if you’re wrong?
What if there’s more?
What if there’s hope you never dreamed of hoping for?
What if you jump?
And just close your eyes?
What if the arms that catch you, catch you by surprise?
What if He’s more than enough?
What if it’s love?
― Nichole Nordeman

What Next?

You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.’ — Eleanor Roosevelt

Anytime you finish a climb, there’s always the next thing you can try. — Alex Honnold

When I talk to students – and I still think of myself more than anything as a kind of professor on leave – they say, ‘Well, how do I get to do what you do?’… And I say, ‘Well, you have to start out by being a failed piano major.’ And my point to them is don’t try to have a 10-year plan. Find the next thing that interests you and follow that. — Condoleezza Rice

Luke 24 Road to Emmaus Commentary
While we might be seeking a Christianity based in glory and triumph, Jesus is seeking us in the places he’s always been found, namely in human frailty, in human brokenness, in the unwashed masses. He’s wooing us in simple table fellowship, and contact with the unclean, and confronting the powers that be. — Nadia Bolz-Weber

The old news about Easter is that it is about resurrection. The new news may be that it is not so much about the resurrection of Jesus as it is about our own. Unfortunately, we so often miss it. Jesus, you see, is already gone from one tomb. The only question now is whether or not we are willing to abandon our own, leave the old trappings behind and live in the light … Consequently, Easter is not simply a day of celebration: It is, as well, a day of decision. What is really to be decided is whether or not we ourselves will rise from the deadening grip of this world’s burnt-out systems to the light-giving time of God’s coming again, this time in us. — Joan ChittisterThese disciples had lost so much more than just a friend. Their dream of what the kingdom of God would look like as they had imagined it…the hopes and dreams around which they had oriented the last three years of their life… the vision that had caused them to give up fishing and tax collecting and the like in order to commit themselves to following Jesus…it was all gone. Each one who had been a part of the community of Jesus now had to come to terms with life on the other side of the death of their wish dream. They had to figure out what to live for now that the vision that had brought order and purpose to their lives was no more. … They were suspended somewhere between loss and possible gain, grief and possible joy, profound human suffering and perhaps some kind of redemption, dashed hopes and maybe daring to hope again. They were wrung out—emotionally, spiritually and physically. They had been powerless to prevent the events of the last days, and they were powerless now to do anything to change their situation. The road from Jerusalem to Emmaus was the road between the now and the not-yet. — Richard Rohr

Do you ever wonder what the risen Christ looked like? No one knows. There are no selfies, no video or audio recordings. The Gospels attest to a series of post-resurrection appearances because someone returning from the dead was remarkable. But even more remarkably, no one seemed to recognize the earthly Jesus in the risen Christ—most notably the people who’d known him best. — M. E. Stortz, Gathr

But the disciples do one thing right in this story — something so apparently insignificant it would be easy to miss. They offer hospitality … Jesus blesses this small act of generosity with the revelation of his presence. In the breaking of the bread they at last recognize him … When we offer hospitality, God uses it not only as a means of serving those in need of refreshment, but also as an invitation for us to experience Jesus’ presence ourselves. — Theology of Work

It’s funny how worry and anxiety and disappointment can blind us from seeing what is right in front of our eyes. When the mind doesn’t believe something possible, it is hard for the senses to receive the information… The light of the world was right beside them, but to their eyes, the risen Lord just looked like a fellow traveler on the way to Emmaus. But Jesus met the disciples where they were at—walking away from Jerusalem, not believing the testimony of the empty tomb, and full of disappointment and anxiety. That’s exactly where Jesus shows up in our lives, too. It is so easy to believe that fears, worries, doubts, anxieties separate us from God, drive God away from us, disappoint Jesus and mean that we are somehow outside the family of God and circle of faith—but that is precisely where Jesus meets us, walks with us, engages us, loves us. And Jesus is not looking for an instant transformation—do you see in this story that building a relationship with Jesus is a process—a journey?! First, Jesus engages in conversation, and he listens to their worries. Second, Jesus teaches them and helps them to understand … Third, Jesus spent enough time with them … to start letting go of their anxiety and start having a new experience—their hearts … burned with a deep knowing, peace, and an experience of God’s love in that moment … Like these disciples on the road to Emmaus, the risen Lord meets us in our anxiety, melancholy or worry—and he journeys with us, building a relationship over time. As the old hymn says, “he walks with us and he talks, and he tells us we are his own.” So, bring your questions, bring your doubts, bring your anxieties, and fears, and worries. For Jesus meets us…  — Linda Anderson-Little