"...the Heart of Me." II

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.

Some days are easier than others to think much of ourselves, to think of how much we have grown into the people we wish to be known as. The journeys we have endured to get to where we currently are, the challenges overcome, the rivers crossed, they make us presume we are surely beyond the pits of many of the evils in this world. Self-attainment. And we are not at all the first persons to feel this way. History is rife with men and women who proclaimed themselves as masters of their own fate, capable of wielding the helm this way or that based on the great right of their stellar character that has been proven in the crucible of herculean tasks. And not just for their own fates, but of others too. They set up seminars, podcasts, they write books and head initiatives with the aim of making those who are yet to climb the mountain, lending their hard-earned wisdom to those who are in desperate need of it. And why do they think so? Well, isn’t it obvious? The prize of worldly success which they have won, worldly success in whichever way the present generation evaluates it. They would not be so adored by the public, influential to the young, if the public did not think they were worth listening to. So, of course, they boast of their means to the end because the end speaks for itself. And it becomes the way of the world.

Yet, just so, history is rife with men and women who have ridden the waves of their good fortune and received acclaim for their prowess at being ‘him’ and spurring unaccomplished people to leap for the stars in their own ways, only for time to reveal them to be who they really are: mere men and women. They had received applause for living the life and being who the powers that be needed to keep the wheels of vanity turning; showered with affection, fame and affluence to play the part they thought they had always wanted. And yet, the heart of them held the same snakes it ever had. Nothing really changed about them. All that they thought they knew better than their peers to be more than their peers was barely beneath the surface. The itch that incited their quest did not have with it an understanding of its cure. More like, it did not want the cure, for the ego that swells in this heart of me lusts for the glitter of this world: a habit from the womb, without dying. No man can escape its grip. Not since Adam. And nobody makes it out alive. It always wins out at the end. Slowly, surely, the comfort of glory in this life dies out to death itself. Insidious, rotting death. For some, they fall like a tree cut down by their own covered flaws. Others age and fail with the lengthening days. And some others turn to stone, hardened into the walls that seal humanity in perpetual corruption. All death.

And there was one man who knew this early enough. Who saw the frailty of his soul against the monster of his heart, and, crushed beneath the weight of his sin and corruption, cried out for salvation. What he had that most men did not, was the wisdom to seek out the antithetical course of reprieve. He had been called out for his wielding of power in cruel oppression, but and at utter odds with the blood that flowed in his veins, he did not seize harder hold on it in right of his gotten authority, he did not revel in his unquestionability to make the world as what he saw fit. He sought the LORD his God in the wretchedness of his nakedness laid bare before He who saw the inner workings of the heart. He prayed to the One who he had sinned against, his Maker.

The matter of the heart is one beyond the will of common man. It is one sealed long, long before he is conceived in his mother’s womb. A perfect doom. He cannot escape it. Unless he calls upon the name of the Lord. But no one calls unless he is called upon, no one sees unless he is first healed. The mercy of the Creator chose David for this good destiny of self-deprecating repentance, by granting him a right spirit. And his heart received salvation, received righting, the breath of the Almighty that gives life.

A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you; and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.

The heart grown stony has no place in the flesh that God made, which is why it corrupts it with sickness and wear and death. The heart is a virus, a rotting cureless virus that must be torn out. But we lack the will to do this, we are helpless against the curse of our ancestors, the snakes coil too deep into our flesh, feeding on our depravity and wickedness, sustaining the decay of our lives and our families. Yet, God is abundant in mercy and unquestionable in power. He is mighty to save. He has done it before, countless times by the word of his power, as from the mouth of his prophets. He can do it for you too. If you hear his voice now, do not harden that heart as it is so easily can be. Let it go. He has a brand new one of supple flesh.