Which piece are you holding today that makes no sense?

Have you ever felt like life is a thousand-piece puzzle and nobody gave you the box top? You have got the pieces. That is all. You hold up a blue one and wonder whether it is the sky or the lake. A green one — a tree, or somebody's shirt. It is worse when it is your actual life. The business you dedicated to the Lord that went bankrupt anyway. The vows you made in front of God and your family that did not hold. The child you raised right who is a thousand miles from God today. The diagnosis. The thing at work. The battle in your own head that nobody sees. And you pray: God, you said you work all things together for good. So how does this piece fit? That is the road to Emmaus. Two men walking away from Jerusalem with everything they hoped for buried on Friday. Was he not the one who was

What have you already concluded about your situation?

Driving home along the MacArthur Causeway, James watched a low-flying aircraft rocking its wings, then nosing over. No floats. No wheels coming down. And it went down, down, down. You are on a bridge. You cannot stop. Three miles to the next exit. They called 911, got bounced from dispatcher to dispatcher, and finally reached Miami Beach — and the man on the line said, oh, right where the seaplane lands. It was an experimental aircraft. No pontoons, no wheels, a flat bottom like a fishing boat, propellers up high. It lands on the water on purpose. He is happy to report there was no plane crash in Miami that Saturday. Everything he saw was real. The wings did rock. It did descend toward the water. Every observation was accurate, and the conclusion was completely wrong — because he was w

Where has your hope moved into the past tense? Finish the sentence: I had hoped that ______.

Are you the only person in Jerusalem who does not know what happened? That is what they say to him. And the irony of the whole story is that he is the only one who does know. He does not correct them. He could have said: funny you should mention it — I was ditched by the men who swore they had my back and left hanging out to dry. He says none of it. He listens, and he lets them get it out. When Jesus asks a question in Scripture, it is almost never because he needs the answer. It is because we do. Now look at verse 21, and at three words in it. We had hoped. Past tense. All of it in the past tense. A lot of us are living in that tense and have not said so out loud. There was a time you were sure God was good and working all things for good. He has quietly stopped being your living hop

Read something familiar looking for him. What did you walk past before?

Here is what Jesus does not do. He does not say, look — it is me. He opens the Bible. Moses, the Psalms, the Prophets. He shows them that like a scarlet thread through the whole thing, every story had been whispering his name, and that the Christ had to suffer these things and then enter his glory. Seven miles of that, and nobody wrote it down. Maybe he went to Psalm 22 — my God, my God, why have you forsaken me — the words he had shouted from the cross. Maybe Isaiah 53: he was pierced for our transgressions, and by his wounds we are healed. Maybe Micah 5:2, naming Bethlehem like a postal address centuries early. Maybe he went to Numbers 21, where God tells Moses to put a bronze snake on a pole so that anyone who looks at it lives — which, at the time, had to feel like a piece with no

Does your heart still burn — and who would you run seven miles to tell?

They beg him to stay. They sit down — and the guest becomes the host. He takes the bread, blesses it, breaks it and gives it to them. The last time these men saw those hands do that, it was the night before the cross. The hands pierced on Friday are breaking bread on Sunday. Their eyes open. And he vanishes. That is a strange gift, when you think about it. He gives them recognition and then removes his physical presence in the same breath. What he leaves them with is a question they ask each other: did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures? And then verse 33, which is the part that gets skipped. That same hour they rose and returned to Jerusalem. Seven miles. In the dark. Two men who had trudged out that afternoon with th

James caught the tense in verse 21 — "we had hoped he was the one." Everything the two men say about Jesus is in the past. What is the difference between a hope you have and a hope you had?

Finding Hope on the Road to Emmaus: How Jesus Reveals Himself Through Scripture

Jesus asks them "what things?" when he is the only person on that road who actually knows. James said he could have set them straight on the spot and instead just listened and let them say what was in their hearts. Why do you think he let them tell him a story he already knew?

Finding Hope on the Road to Emmaus: How Jesus Reveals Himself Through Scripture

James called Christ the box top of the puzzle, and used Numbers 21 as an example — God tells Moses to put a bronze snake on a stake, which looks like the very thing God forbade, until John 3:14 makes sense of it. Where in the Bible have you hit a piece that seems not to fit?

Finding Hope on the Road to Emmaus: How Jesus Reveals Himself Through Scripture

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Finding Jesus in Your Broken Pieces · Group Guide

Luke 24

James Drake Sunday, October 5, 2025

Icebreaker

When was the last time you tried to put something together without the instructions or the picture on the box? How did that go, and at what point did you give in and look?

Discussion Questions

1
James caught the tense in verse 21 — "we had hoped he was the one." Everything the two men say about Jesus is in the past. What is the difference between a hope you have and a hope you had?
2
Jesus asks them "what things?" when he is the only person on that road who actually knows. James said he could have set them straight on the spot and instead just listened and let them say what was in their hearts. Why do you think he let them tell him a story he already knew?
3
James called Christ the box top of the puzzle, and used Numbers 21 as an example — God tells Moses to put a bronze snake on a stake, which looks like the very thing God forbade, until John 3:14 makes sense of it. Where in the Bible have you hit a piece that seems not to fit?
4
The guest becomes the host — the hands pierced on Friday are the hands breaking bread on Sunday — and the second they recognize him, he is gone. James said what Jesus left them with was a hunger for his word. Why might that have been better for them than him staying?
5
James described a life that feels like a thousand-piece puzzle with no box top — the business dedicated to God that went bankrupt, the vows that did not hold, the child raised right who is far from God. Which piece of your life can you not place right now?
6
They had already walked seven miles, and they ran the seven miles back in the dark to tell people. James said lovers tell. Who is the one person you would run back to? What would you actually say to them this week?

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Finding Jesus in Your Broken Pieces · Group Guide

Luke 24

Discussion Questions

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