The Heart Of The Matter

The Heart of the Matter

I will give them singleness of heart and put a new spirit within them. I will take away their stony, stubborn heart and give them a tender, responsive heart.

Ezekiel 11:19

What a Marvel! The human heart beats seventy-five times a minute, forty million times a year, or two and a half billion times in a life of seventy years. At each beat, the average adult heart discharges about four ounces of blood. This amounts to three thousand gallons a day or 650,000 gallons a year—enough to fill more than eighty-one tank cars of eight thousand gallons each. The heart does enough work in one hour to lift a 150-pound man to the top of a three-story building, enough power in seventy years to lift the largest battleship afloat completely out of the water.^a

In spite of the miraculous power of this vital human organ and what it represents in the human spirit, our hearts—as this verse points out—can become divided and even turn to stone. The cause? It’s not cholesterol or high blood pressure. It’s what Ezekiel calls “vile images and detestable idols” (Ezekiel 11:18) that cause our hearts to harden. So we ask you, what images and idols is your heart given to? Is there something that has hardened your heart? Perhaps it is the idol of resentment or the vile image of retribution. It could be any number of things that cause a stony, stubborn heart. The question is, What will it take to have a tender, responsive heart? As you probably know, the answer is not an easy one. More often than not, our hard hearts need a bit of breaking to soften them up.

Anglo-Irish author and playwright Oscar Wilde asked a poignant question of anyone who has “heart problems”: How else but through a broken heart may the Lord Christ enter in?

I would rather have eyes that cannot see; ears that cannot hear, lips that cannot speak, than a heart that cannot love.

—Robert Tizon

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