Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 345 · December 11
The Burning Afterwards
“And they said one to another, Did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the scriptures?”
Seven miles of road, late afternoon, two people walking away from a city where somebody they trusted had been executed three days before. A stranger falls in and asks what they are talking about, and they stop walking, because it is an absurd question. Art thou only a stranger in Jerusalem, and hast not known the things which are come to pass there in these days?
The sentence about the burning heart is said afterwards, and that is the thing to hold. It comes at supper, after he has broken bread and vanished, when they turn to each other and reconstruct the walk. On the walk itself their eyes were holden that they should not know him, and they spoke of their own hopes in the past tense: we trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel. Whatever was going on in their chests told them nothing at the time. They were sad, they were courteous to a stranger, and they nearly let him keep walking. He made as though he would have gone further.
What did open their eyes was ordinary and physical. He took bread, and blessed it, and brake, and gave to them. Luke says it twice, in the scene and again in the report they carry back to Jerusalem: how he was known of them in breaking of bread. Two hours of exposition on the road, beginning at Moses and all the prophets, left them still walking beside a stranger. It produced the heat they were only able to identify later.
A heart that burns and cannot say why is a poor instrument in the moment, and both of them had one. What were they supposed to do with it while it was happening? And what, exactly, have you been asking yours to do for you?
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 345 is Love Responding to Love (1 John 4:19).