Friends

Two disciples walked all the way from Jerusalem to Emmaus, had supper, and ended up with a case of heart burn. This was no mere case of reflexive esophagitis; this burning went much deeper.

It’s like God’s response to Moses in the story of Moses and the Shepherd:

I look inside at the humility.
That broken-open lowliness is the Reality, not the language!
Forget phraseology.
I want burning, burning.
Be Friends with your burning.
Burn up your thinking and your forms of expression!
Moses, those who pay attention to ways of behaving
and speaking are one sort.
Lovers who burn are another.

This is not the season of esophagitis but it is the season of burning hearts. It is time to burn away the dead way of despair. Time to burn off the clutter of distracting behaviors and fanciful mind games. The time is come to step into the refreshing flame of the One who longs to fire our spirits with Love.

God entrusts you and me with an awsome responsibility - we can choose what sort of human being we will be in this moment and in the next. We can choose to be self absorbed. We can choose to ignore the plight of those less fortunate than ourselves. We can choose a cool distance from those eager to love us. We can choose death over life. Yet even in the midst of the coldest heart a fire burns.

It does not matter what choices we have made. At any moment we can turn loose of those anchors of death and realize that each breath presents the opportunity to choose anew. Our hearts, too, can burn.

Those two disciples walking towards Emmaus were on a path of dark despair. For them it was over - Jesus was executed and their devotion was crucified with him. Yet even in the midst of that angst walking with the stranger their hearts already burned - "Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road...?"

What path do you walk? Are you the sort that burns? There is One who wishes to set you and me ablaze in this moment and the next. Let us, in this Eastertide and always, be friends with that burning.

Joel t