Third Sunday of Easter
April 19, 2026
Were Not Our Hearts Burning?
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Today's
Readings
Acts 2:14,
22-33 Peter stood
up at Pentecost and declared: "This Jesus, whom you crucified, God raised up.
David had foretold it. We are all witnesses. God has made Him both Lord and
Christ.
1 Peter
1:17-21 You were
ransomed not with perishable things like silver or gold, but with the precious
blood of Christ. Your faith and hope are in God, who raised Him from the dead.
Luke
24:13-35 On the
road to Emmaus, the Risen Jesus walked with two disciples who did not recognize
Him. He opened the Scriptures to them. When He broke the bread, their eyes were
opened. They said: Were not our hearts burning within us while He spoke?
Today's
Thread: Our Burning Hearts.
They walked seven
miles with Jesus and did not know it was Him. But something was happening
inside them the whole time; their hearts were burning. The recognition came in
the breaking of the bread, but the encounter had already been real long before
they saw clearly.
Peter's sermon and
the ransom passage from Peter's letter both say the same thing from different
angles: this was not an accident. This was God's plan. The blood of Christ was
not spilled in defeat. It was poured out with purpose.
Living
It Today:
You may be in a
season right now where you do not fully recognize what God is doing. The path
feels long and confusing, like Emmaus. But pay attention to what your heart is
doing. Is there a burning, a pull toward something, a quiet recognition that He
is near?
Ask Jesus to open
the Scriptures to you today. Not just to inform you, but to set something on
fire inside you. This is what the Word is meant to do.
Something
to sit with today:
The two disciples on the road
to Emmaus didn't recognize Jesus, not because He was hidden, but because grief
had narrowed their vision. He walked beside them anyway, patient and present,
waiting to be seen. So often this is how He moves in our own lives: not in
thunder, but in companionship, closer than we realize until something cracks
open and we finally see.
When have you
looked back on a hard season and realized He had been with you all along — and
what did that recognition do to your heart?
The disciples could have let the moment pass. Instead, they urged Him: "Stay
with us." That small act
of pressing in changed everything; the bread was broken, their eyes were
opened, and they ran back to tell the world. Grace rarely forces its way in; it
waits to be invited.
Is there a
quiet moment of grace in your life right now that is asking you to say the same,
…to stay?
