Have Ye Here Any Meat?
The boxes are unpacked, or maybe they're still stacked in the corner of a room that doesn't feel like yours yet. The framed diploma sits on a nightstand, catching the strange new light of a life you've not yet lived. It’s three in the morning. Everyone who celebrated you has gone home, and the silence in your head is deafening. You did it. You walked the stage, shook the hands, and turned the tassel. But now, in the quiet, a question bubbles up from a place deeper than all your hard-won knowledge: Now what? There’s a strange hollowness that accomplishment can’t fill, a disorientation that feels a lot like being lost. It’s a joy so massive it verges on disbelief, tangled up with a terrifying, thrilling, paralyzing freedom.
This is the very air the disciples were breathing in that locked room. Look at them. They’d just been told the most astonishing news in human history, and when Jesus himself appears, they are suspended in a state of shock. The scripture says, 'they yet believed not for joy, and wondered.' They were paralyzed by the sheer goodness of the news. And what does our Lord do? He doesn't launch into a systematic theology of the resurrection. He doesn't hand them a five-point plan for church planting. He asks the most gloriously mundane, human question imaginable. 'Have ye here any meat?' He grounds their soaring, terrified hearts in the simple, solid reality of a meal, asking for a piece of broiled fish and a bit of honeycomb.
And right there, in that simple act, is the Gospel for your new beginning. He took the fish, and the honeycomb, 'and did eat before them.' This is not a ghost. This is not a metaphor. This is the real, living, breathing Christ, meeting his bewildered friends not in a mystical vision, but in their hunger, in their room, in their reality. He is the God who meets you over takeout on your new apartment floor, the God who is present in the confusing first days of a new job, the God who anchors your spinning heart not with a philosophical concept, but with His tangible, abiding presence. Before He gives the Great Commission, He proves He is with you in the small, the ordinary, the everyday.
So what now? You can't just stand there with a diploma in your hand, wondering what's next. You have to eat. You have to live. You have to invite the resurrected Christ into the mundane, broiled-fish moments of your brand new life, trusting that He is as real there as He was in that upper room.
And while they yet believed not for joy, and wondered, he said unto them, Have ye here any meat? And they gave him a piece of a broiled fish, and of an honeycomb. And he took it, and did eat before them.— Luke 24:41-43, KJV
Then Opened He Their Understanding
For four years, maybe more, you've lived in a world of defined metrics. You studied the material, you wrote the papers, you passed the exams. You learned the system and mastered its rules. Your success was a direct product of your effort, your intellect, your discipline. In a way, it's the sanitized, modern version of the Pharisees' world from Mark chapter 7, a world built on external observances and meticulously followed traditions. They found fault with the disciples for eating with 'unwashen, hands,' because the system, the tradition, the human-made structure, was paramount. But that entire way of thinking, that reliance on your own performance and understanding, will crack and shatter under the weight of life’s real questions about failure, purpose, suffering, and grace.
The disciples had all the source material. They possessed the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms. They had three years of personal instruction from the greatest Teacher who ever lived. And still, they didn't get it. The cross was a tragic failure to them, not a prophesied victory. All their knowledge was just data, disconnected and powerless, until Jesus performed a miracle far more intimate than healing a blind man's eyes. He healed their blind minds. The Gospel truth you need to stake your life on is this: your purpose is not something you achieve through intellectual rigor, it is a revelation you receive by an act of divine grace. You don't find the answers; the Answer finds you.
Look at the sequence in the text. First, He eats with them, establishing His real presence. Then, He connects it all back to the Word. 'These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled...' He shows them the plan was always there, woven into the very fabric of Scripture. And then the pivotal verse for your life right now: 'Then opened he their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures.' This is it. This is the true graduation. It is a supernatural act where the Spirit of God takes the black ink on a white page and makes it a living, breathing word in your soul, a word that is entirely and eternally about Him.
And he said unto them, These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you... Then opened he their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures,— Luke 24:44-45, KJV
And Ye Are Witnesses of These Things
With an opened mind comes a new identity. Notice, Jesus doesn't say, 'And ye are scholars of these things,' or 'Ye are professionals of these things.' He says something much more profound, much more fundamental. 'And ye are witnesses of these things.' A witness isn’t required to have all the answers, a perfect life, or a five-year plan. A witness has only one job: to testify to what they have personally seen and heard. This is your calling in that new job, in that new city, in that new season of uncertainty. Your life becomes a testimony. It’s what you say when a colleague asks why you have a quiet hope in the face of bad news. It's how you respond when you inevitably fail, not by hiding in shame, but by pointing to the 'remission of sins' that is your only real resume.
Please, hear me on this. Don't leave the university campus only to build a new one around your faith, full of rules and performance metrics and the pressure to appear successful. That is the dead religion of the Pharisees, obsessed with clean hands and empty hearts. You are not called to be a good religious person. You are called to be a living, breathing witness to a resurrected Christ. Rest in that identity. It is a gift, not a job title. Your only qualification is that you have encountered the living Lord. That's it. Let that be the story you tell, not the story of your accolades or achievements, but the story of His suffering and His rising.
To live as a witness means your entire orientation shifts. Your primary identity is no longer 'accountant' or 'nurse' or even 'graduate.' Your primary identity is 'witness.' That cannot be shaken by a layoff, a difficult relationship, or a season of doubt. It is rooted in an event that tore history in two: the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The content of your witness is not your own opinion or life advice, but the very message He gave them: 'that repentance and remission ofsins should be preached in his name among all nations.' You get to tell the world that a U-turn is possible and that a full pardon is available. That is a message worth building a life on.
And that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. And ye are witnesses of these things.— Luke 24:47-48, KJV
Tarry... Until
Right after giving them this world-altering mission, Jesus gives them a command that must have felt like hitting the brakes. He has just told them to go to all nations, but His very next breath contains a crucial pause. 'And, behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you: but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high.' Wait. Stay put. Don't you dare move. This is the most counter-cultural, anti-ambition instruction a young, eager person can receive. The world is screaming at you to go, to strive, to build, to achieve. But Jesus says the power for the mission doesn't come from your momentum, your talent, or that shiny new degree. The power comes from on high. The promise of the Father must come before the work of your hands.
Your greatest temptation in this next season will be to rush out and build a life in your own strength. You'll want to apply the same principles of hard work and strategic planning that got you through college to your spiritual life and your career. But that is to return to the chains of performance, to build a life on the flimsy foundation of what you can do for God, instead of the bedrock of what He has done for you. Heed this command to tarry. It's not a call to idleness, but a call to a posture of radical dependence. It's the conscious choice to prioritize seeking the presence and power of the Holy Spirit over frantically trying to make things happen. Don't leave the starting block without your power source.
And, behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you: but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high.— Luke 24:49, KJV
And how does Jesus leave them? Does He give a final, stern warning? A last-minute list of instructions? No. 'And he led them out as far as to Bethany, and he lifted up his hands, and blessed them.' This is the final image, the posture to carry with you as you walk off the stage of one life and onto the stage of the next. You do not go alone. You do not go with a burden. You go with a blessing, from the uplifted hands of your risen King. He leads you out. He blesses you. That blessing is not contingent on your future success or your flawless performance. It is a gift, freely given from the one who holds all authority in heaven and on earth. Live inside that blessing. Let it be the air you breathe and the ground beneath your feet, and you will be His witness, from this day to the ends of the earth.