Opened her heart

The reading today includes the beginning of the “we passages” in Acts and also the phrase that the Lord “opened her heart” which did not immediately register with me because the sermon was on the gospel reading from John. Later in the day after my constitutional walk, I realized that Luke is alerting us in Acts 16:10-14 that this passage alludes to an earlier “we passage” in Luke where Lord opened their hearts. Thus the experience of Lydia is compared to that of Peter at Shavuot in Acts 2:37 and that of Cleopas and his companion on the road to Emmaus, all paralleled in 2 Macc 1:2-4. 

Cleopas told the unknown person traveling with them what “our chief priests and rulers” did. This is an earlier use of a first person plural similar to that of the famous “we passages” in Acts that begins with Acts 16:10 where Luke indicates his presence in the incidents recounted.