A New Heart

And I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit in you.  I will take out your stony, stubborn heart and give you a tender, responsive heart—Jeremiah 36:26 NLT

The heart is a phenomenal muscle.  Each minute it pumps 1.5 gallons of blood throughout the body and beats 100,000 times a day.  It also has its own electrical supply and will continue to beat for a short time absent from the body.  Isn’t that amazing!?  While the heart is faithful to continue its good work, it is also used for something entirely different.  It is the seat of emotions and has the ability to make us feel things such as joy, sadness, and fear.  While we are thankful the heart continues beating and keeps our blood circulating, sometimes we are not thankful when our heart feels raw and unpleasant emotions.  Who wants a broken and hurting heart, right?  Well, let me give you something to mull over—a broken heart might not be such a bad thing.

I’ve prayed many prayers in my walk with the Lord.  I can remember some while others, once whispered, are caught up with the wind and fly away never to be remembered (*a side note:  be careful what you pray for…God remembers even if you don’t).  Sometimes God reminds me of particular requests that I have brought before Him and each time He does that, I find it to be a learning and growing moment.  Recently, one such instance happened.

It was late, and I was heading to my car after a long day at work.  My office is in the bustling downtown area of a large city where stray dogs are a rarity.  Not on this day.  There were two of them in the parking lot.  One, a momma dog who’d obviously just had puppies, drank skittishly from a large puddle of water near my car, and the other stood not too far away.  As I approached, Momma stopped drinking and eyed me warily ready to run at a seconds notice.  Aside from skin and bones, something else stood out—their tails hung low.  They were starving AND downcast.  

I am a dog lover!  If there’s a dog around I’m going to pet it.  Oh how I wanted to befriend these two castaways, but I knew that I would only give them false hope so I ignored them and got into my car; my heart now broken in two.  I immediately began to beg, “Lord, please protect them.  Lord, please bring them a family who will love them and feed them and take good care of them.  Their tails are hanging low!  They’re so sad.”  On and on I bombarded Heaven on their behalf, angry that they were left to fend for themselves and sad because the world is full of the starving and cast aside—not only animals, but people too.  Sadly, this is the world we live in.  

My heart hurt so badly that I wanted the pain to go away.  Why, oh why did my heart have to hurt this way?  Lord, why?  In answer to that question, He so lovingly interrupted my plea with the remembrance of a prayer—one asking Him for the ability to love like He loves.  One begging Him to give me a heart of flesh that feels love and compassion for all His creation.  The pain that consumed me at that very moment…the intense pain I so desperately wanted to be relieved of was in fact an answered prayer.  Wow!

It took a few minutes to let that one soak in.  I sat silent, trying to wrap my mind around what had just happened.  In all God’s glory, He had imparted unto me the gift of unconditional love and with it came the realization that sometimes love and pain are bound together.  The capacity to love so deeply that your heart aches.  Yes, I asked for it and He answered.

What a gift the Lord has bestowed upon me!  To love like Jesus loves.  The intertwining of my heart with His agape love.  The kind of love that says sometimes it's better be quiet than right.  The kind of love that quickly offers forgiveness and takes no offense when wronged.  A love that sees past the angry exterior of a person and looks at their heart and their hurt.  The kind of love that enables one to hurt deeply out of compassion for someone else.  It brings to your knees.  It allows you to view each and every person as the precious child of God they are.  A child created in His image.  

Do I regret my request?  A resounding no!  I’ve learned to lean into the pain and, at times, envision myself lifting my aching heart to the Heavens and giving it to Him.  This newfound love brings me to prayer.  It enables me to put myself aside and boldly go to the throne of grace and mercy and make requests to God on behalf of someone else.  This gift is indeed a priceless treasure and I am so thankful I asked for it.