Devotion 367 - heart

The boy calls me from school saying “my chest hurts.”

And suddenly this mama’s chest hurts too.

This doesn’t happen.  He is young and healthy. 

“Have you been on the football field?  Have you been in the weight room?” I queried.

We all read the stories, the undetected problem, and the shock.  We call the doctor and he orders some tests.

But this mama with the hurting chest looks at her son and wonders if it is the heart that is hurting.  Not the muscle, but the myriad of things that well up and pump through the brain.  And I wonder if it is those that are causing the discomfort.

My generation looks at the children of today and think they have it all;  I am sure much like my parents and grandparents looked at mine.

Today we don’t have to go to the library, it unfolds in our hands.  We don’t have to pine for a Christmas show, it is a click away.  We don’t have to beg to use the phone, the phone is carried in our pocket.  The long distance of relationship has been contracted to a web that connects us all, all the time.

So what is it Beloved that hurts? 

Times change, relationships change, pressures change, jobs change, but now, for this young generation the changes occur at the blink of an eye, in the nanoseconds of life.  Very little is left secret.  The hearts of my children, the hearts of the world are opened wide for faces to read their books.

And it hurts.

My father waxes poetic that much of what is said today loud and clear was once only discussed in the boardroom or bedroom.  I wish those days back.

If we cannot say it to someone’s face, we type it, tweet it, text it or Instagram it.  And it hurts.

We have lost the art of encouragement and exchanged it for heart of deceit.  By ripping open wide our insides we read in caps what Jeremiah wrote, “We are a wicked, deceitful people.”

I see it in the mirror; I don’t want to read it on my wall.

My little girl and her kindergarten class are trying hard to do or say or create one hundred acts of kindness in this heart month of February.  I write them down.  

When she makes the bed or cleans the table I record it but I long for the ones that happen fresh out of the heart, the ones that are spontaneously spoken to the sibling who has been unkind or the mama that has lost her temper.

This generation has been given free access to the weapons of war; the destruction of the heart through the arrows of discouragement.  It is this war, this war on evil where the battle lines have been drawn.

We have to charge ourselves, our children, our spouses to speak and type life and hope.  I believe it is this single act that will start differentiating us who have the heart of Christ to be His soldiers.

He tells us to guard our hearts, but what dear one is our arsenal.  It is prayer, it is scripture but it is also the doors we open or shut with our words.

I am convinced a kind word opens the gateway of glory because they are tragically in such short supply.  It is our heart that is the wellspring of life or the deluge of discouragement.

We must say kind, type kind, build up 

and refuse to tear down.

We must rescue the hurting, 

and remind them there is a balm,

 He is Jesus.

We must bandage the believer,

 and the unbeliever alike.

We all fight the same assault of hopelessness and despair. Let us paint the masterpiece He has chartered for us all.   

We suffer yes, we hurt yes, we disappoint yes, and this language speaks to every human that draws breath.  

The single difference is we do not suffer or hurt alone.  We have the Holy Spirit who mends and enlightens and encourages. 

Let us point the hurting hearts  to Him.

You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. Jeremiah 29:13