A shift in thought can refresh and heal
Have you ever encountered a new idea or a new way of looking at things that caused your heart to burn within you?
According to Scripture this is what two of Jesus’ disciples experience on their long walk from Jerusalem toward Emmaus. They carry on this journey a heavy burden in the aftermath of Jesus’ crucifixion and uncertainty after hearing reports that he had since been sighted. As they make their way down the dusty road a stranger appears. It is Jesus. At first they don’t recognize him. As the three proceed, Jesus opens to them many scriptural passages concerning the anticipation and fulfillment of the Messiah or Christ. At one point in the journey, they pause to eat, and when Jesus breaks bread and blesses it, they recognize the risen Savior. This meeting with their Master is recorded in Luke 24:13-32, which concludes, “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?”
It’s a moving story from a couple of thousand years ago. But what about now? I felt something of that inward burning or spiritual glow right in 2023 at a recent gathering (in-person in Boston and virtually for members around the world) of my church, the Church of Christ, Scientist (Christian Science). Members were invited to consider the theme, “The discovery today – where hearts catch fire.” This theme was a reminder of the activity of the Holy Spirit and the promise it offers humanity when we turn from everyday burdens toward God who “… so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).
One participant, responding to the spirit of the meeting of church members, expressed it in these words: “Singing hymns with several hundred fellow adherents of my faith, I found it is not so much losing my voice in the collection of voices as it is joining the surrounding vocal ocean and being part of, and humbly contributing to, something larger than myself, something beautiful because it is church in action.” It’s that childlike reception of the largeness of God’s creation that stirs the heart and renews hope.
Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of the Christian Science Church, writes in her book, “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures” that “Man understands spiritual existence in proportion as his treasures of Truth and Love [God] are enlarged. Mortals must gravitate Godward, their affections and aims grow spiritual, — they must near the broader interpretations of being, and gain some proper sense of the infinite, — in order that sin and mortality may be put off.
This scientific sense of being, forsaking matter for Spirit, by no means suggests man’s absorption into Deity and the loss of his identity, but confers upon man enlarged individuality, a wider sphere of thought and action, a more expansive love, a higher and more permanent peace.
With so much negativity in the world, including sensational headlines that pull our attention, it’s helpful to be reminded of the possibilities that open through a counter-narrative: we can reexamine the lens we are looking through and take on purer motives of hearts impelled by loving God first. We too – “we” meaning all of us – can find our hearts burning within.