A Heard Heart

I was at a seminar recently where we were talking about 'hard hearts'. It's a scary thing, really, that our hearts can harden.

Sometimes I can feel my heart hardening toward the Lord, as I brush off time with Him, or tell myself I cannot wait to hear his counsel on certain matters. Sometimes I wake up in the morning with a hard heart, like a lusty dream is all it takes to turn my thoughts away from God, an invisible God after all, one who can be successfully put in a cupboard or assigned to the air up there somewhere.

The notes at the seminar had a typo at one point. The phrase 'hard heart' became 'heard heart'. It struck me that just as it can be quick to become 'hard', how simple and quick it is to be 'heard'. With a simple 'e' - 'eee', 'eep', 'eish, Lord' - I am heard. It reminds me of the way John (of the Gospel of John) identifies himself by a Third Party: he is not 'lovable', or 'loving' - he is 'loved'. Such a simple but powerful change, to trust your identity to God.

If you say 'eep', you're Heard. You have a heard heart. Be encouraged!

“In my distress I called to the Lord, I cried to my God for help. From His temple He heard my voice; my cry came before Him, into His ears.” (Psalm 18v6)

Safer Than a Known Way

Half a term of school teaching, an abandoned Proverbs-study-writing-thing, and 87 comfort-watching episodes of House later, here I am still processing the change that's come with moving back to Zimbabwe and taking up a new career.

I miss Scotland. I miss the simplicity of green fields and stupid sheep, and silent mountains to rail at. I miss the weather. Yep. I do. It's played in the minor key I think in.

Everything that is different and the same about being back is mashed up in my mind like a pile of untangleable string. I try to pull one thread apart and find more knots and bunches than I can bother with.

There's this beautiful quote that's been hovering in the back of my mind for a while now, about a person standing at the beginning of a new season. He asks for a light... “'Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown'. And he [the man who stood at the gate of the year] replied, 'Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God. That shall be to you better than light, and safer than a known way” (Mary Haskins).

Oh God! You've made all things new. I ask for your grace to be different from the person I used to be in the place I used to be it in! Your unknowable grace is safer than a known way.