A Heart of Flesh

A Heart of Flesh

In Ezekiel, twice God mentions that He will gather a people and give them a heart of flesh and remove their hearts of stone. Now at first that doesn't seem like much of an improvement to me, I mean, a heart of flesh? I already have one of those, don't I? Couldn't He give me an upgrade to like a heart of titanium or something?







Apparently to God, for some reason a heart of flesh, a heart that is vulnerable to its surroundings is of greater value than a heart which cannot be affected by God or people.
After our recent trip from Swansea one of the members from our team called and left me a message on my phone, they were obviously distraught and when I returned their call, they were barley able to hold back the tears and emotion. I wondered what had happened and of course imagined the worst, but as they began to tell me what was going on I recognized what was taking place, because it had happened to me before as well. They had been wounded by God

Now when I say wounded by God most of the time we think it a bad thing, like getting dumped by your girlfriend (or boyfriend), but being wounded by God is completely different in that the wounds that He inflicts makes you more in love, not less, makes you want to be more vulnerable, not less. What in fact is happening is that the wounding is breaking away the stone, the selfishness, the lack of caring and in turn it is giving you a heart of flesh and it is only in contrast that you see how before it was a stone. My friend had come to realized after giving of themselves in effort, time and emotion how much they truly cared and being away from the people as well as that concentrated work of God broke their heart.

That is the trouble with a heart of flesh; it can be broken, wounded and ruined,
...ruined by a love that is more, not less.

Significance

Significance

What makes something significant or of importance to us? It seems that whether its clothes, music or people, what makes things significant is how we connect with them. Clothes may be comfortable or make us look thinner, music connects to our emotions or relates to our life, but people, well this is where I think we need to be careful.





I find the parable Jesus told about the Good Samaritan to be very revealing to our nature as human beings. Here was a person who chose to take care of not only a stranger but the context is also of someone to whom there were strong social prejudices against. Yet in the story this Samaritan treated the stranger with extreme kindness, with a significant cost to himself.
It may surprise you but some people when asked if both your favorite pet and a stranger were drowning and you could only rescue one, which would you save? Surprisingly some have said they would save their pets above the stranger. Now put in that actual situation I pray that a deeper reason would prevail, but it is alarming to think to some it might not.

It seems to me we may need to rethink what we hold important when it comes to people. Do we think people are a comodity and important because of how they affect us? Like clothes, music or food? Or is it because of their importance to God? If our measure is solely about us, then we too will rescue our favorite pet over a human stranger, but if "man" was truly created in the image of God, then people are of value not because of OUR relationship to them, but because of their relationship to God.

… I think that is very significant