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Emmaus

Wednesday, April 18, 2001

Luke 24:13-35
When Jesus was at the table with them,
He took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them.
Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight.
They asked each other, "Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?"


During the 70's I hitchhiked all over the country. Once I even carried a guitar on top of my backpack. Sleeping outside in a sleeping bag, a few steps away from the highway, I saw sunrises and sunsets that took my breath away. I remember times just walking down the road into the endless horizon, telephone poles converging, heat rising off the pavement, the silence of open fields and an empty highway, butterflies on the wild roses.

Like the distant telephone poles, my past and future seemed often to converge in a vast airy present. The possibilities were endless. Waiting for cars to stop, my faith muscles grew. Sometimes it was scary, to be picked up by a reckless driver ... once by a couple of guys who claimed they had robbed a carpet store and waved a gun around. (I think they were kidding.) Often it was stimulating, talking about religion and ethics and life with old men and young men often lonely themselves. We enjoyed each other, we parted ways and remembered the moments of our meeting.

I remember spending hours in Gettysburg, wondering if a car would ever stop. Finally one did, and took me clear to Indiana. One night in July I fell asleep in a desert. It rained that night. In the morning I woke up in the sunshine, and below me down the hill the Hopis were dancing their Home Dance. I watched amazed. Another night I had to walk a couple of miles, and I slept alone under a cliff on Table Rock Lake. In the morning I dove in and got clean, then the sun filled me up and I walked a couple miles back to the road. Headed west.

There were times, walking, hitchhiking, taking risks, that my heart "burned within me." I am sure I met Jesus often on those trips. He walked with me, he talked with me; it was only later that I realized who he was. And I am so thankful for the food he fed me and feeds me, for his continual appearing and disappearing, for the way my heart burns within me upon his touch.

Lord, in just spring, when the balloonman whistles far and wee, open us like the daffodils to your light and warmth and love.



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