45 Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures.
It is impossible to truly understand the Scriptures unless our minds are opened by the Lord. Since it is a book from God about God, God must open our minds to understand it. This is hard for a generation that feels it can master any task. We are the self-sufficient generation. We feel we can and should be able to do whatever we set our minds to do. We don’t think in terms of limitation, especially when it is someone imposing those limitations on us. And yet the most important task in life cannot be accomplished without the direct help of God. For people who are taught that we randomly rose from some pond soup millions of year ago, and that the toughest survived and rose to the height of planet, this is a hard message. But Jesus had to open the minds of these disciples. They had witnessed Jesus’ life and death. They were with Him as He explained and expounded the Scriptures throughout His ministry. And yet, somehow they had missed the main points. There were times when I was in school that I felt like I missed the main points. The moment of truth would come when I would get the test back. Ouch! I had tried so hard, and yet missed it by so much. These two disciples now had the privilege of a refresher course. They were in Summer School with the Master Teacher. And the student-teacher ratio was advantageous for the ideal learning environment. They were walking, keeping the body active to increase the ability of the brain to process the information and put it into long term memory. And God was helping them to understand. The blocks were removed that prevented them from learning the first time around. Today we have the advantage of the whole Scriptures. We can study and put our hands on copies of God’s written revelation of Himself. We can see His story in History. We have the advantage of distance which gives us the ability to see more of the whole as opposed to getting stuck on one small part. But we also need the work of God in our hearts and minds so that we don’t miss the truth. God must still work in our lives or all this is just an academic exercise and accomplishes nothing eternal.
The Arnold Journey 