This morning my devotional app shared a reading from Ezekiel with me. They are words that I am familiar with; words I have heard before. But right in the middle the narrator of this morning's devotions pauses and she asks us to consider our hearts together.
Ezekiel writes these words:
"And I will give you a new heart,
and I will be put a new spirit in you.
I will take out your stony,
stubborn heart and give you a tender, responsive heart." (Ezekiel 36:26 NLT).
As I listened to the soft music playing in the background, the narrator invited us to be still before the Lord and consider a stony heart and a tender heart.
So I want you to consider the stone heart?
It is heavy. Solid. Un-moldable. I imagine if my heart was stone that it would feel heavy to carry around in my chest; a burden I am forced to lug around and one I cannot be freed from. The edges of the stone are rough, and in their roughness, the stone can slip from my grip or cut the fingers that carry it. I wouldn't like to have a stone heart.
What does that say spiritually to you about your own heart or the times when your heart has felt like stone? . . .
Now in contrast I wonder about the tender, responsive, fleshly heart that the Lord promises to give you and me as recorded in Ezekiel? It is living. Easy to carry. Flexible. While stones are not alive, a tender heart is alive and it beats/pumps life from God to us, and by extension to the world.
It is understandable that our hearts today feel stone-like. The world has bruised and beaten the church's heart under the heavy weight of division and judgment. But today notice your own heart. Notice if it feels hard like a stone or soft and tender like flesh.
Perhaps you and God could find a way together to move away from practices and choices that harden the heart and back toward health and well-being?
Blessings
💕✝️
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