Just visited a surgery to check my Mum’s heart on a scan. It was fascinating to see the shape of Mum’s heart (just like on the chocolate boxes) pumping away and then parts of it being filmed and data collected. What an amazing organ we have that keeps on going regardless of how we feel or move or talk etc. unless of course there is a weakness with the working of it.

They say that the heart is the centre of our lives.  Without its working, we would be dead and with it we can feel when it is being stretched by exercise or aching because we have overdone it and need to rest.  Our bodies are so incredibly sensitive to how we treat them yet amazingly robust, too.

God considers our heart to be the very centre of our lives, too. In an abstract way, we can understand that our hearts can rule our emotions and thus actions that formulate in our thinking. God has said ‘Give me your heart’ and rightly so as he it is who is our creator and when in tandem with our maker we function better. ‘Out of the heart are the issues of life’  – so said the writer of Proverbs (possibly King Solomon, a very wise king, although towards the end of his life he was taken over by women and lots of them!) King David of old wanted his heart to be pure and although he blew it many times in his life, as he genuinely repented, God not only forgave him but also gave him the desire to have a pure heart. He became known as a man after God’s heart. So, he wanted to do what God required. So with us – we can have that heart attitude and see God do amazing things with and in and through us.

Let’s channel our energies to pleasing God so we can have a heart after him continually. Let’s also encourage our children to major on this, too, not the outward extravaganza but the inner working of their malleable heart (not just the physical). God is able to make all of us into a trophy of grace that can be presented to our Maker whenever he chooses. Then, it will be the heart matters and the choices that we have made throughout our lives that will count the most.

We need to aim at the best and the things that will last forever. This world is not my home (as the song goes) we’re just a passing through. So, let’s concentrate and what really matters, get our lives right before God while we can and then watch how he grows his life in us and deals with all our heart issues.