After I put up the last post (Heart Stint 2) and wrote the line "He left his autograph inside my chest," I begin to think about the concept of heart.
When I was a kid growing up in a classic Pentecostal church in the South we used to sing:
Into my heart, into my heart,
Come into my heart, Lord Jesus;
Come in today, come in to stay.
Come into my heart, Lord Jesus.
(Words and music by Harry D. Clarke)
When I would sing this song I pictured Jesus coming into my chest, knowing that that was where my heart was. No one supplied me with a different view of the concept of heart.
Actually the word “heart” in Scripture is a metaphor for a person's “whole” being. It is not a specific part of one’s spiritual anatomy. To divide a person into parts is based on a Greek way of thinking not a Hebraic way of thinking. So when I was singing that song as a kid I was actually asking Jesus to come be a part of my whole life, i.e., to put his signature in me.
So many years before the doctor left his signature on my physical heart, Jesus left his signature in my personhood, stamped to be a “true human” with a vocation to be a “light to the world” so that the world could see what God is really like.
My physical heart now has several stints in place. They were put in to open up clogged arteries so the blood flowing through my heart could supply all parts of my heart muscle with the needed oxygen. My life, like my heart, has had many spiritual stints put in place by the Jesus in places where sin had clogged me up and his life giving Spirit could not flow bringing me the spiritual oxygen that I so desperately needed.
Like the physical stint, the placement of the spiritual stints were painful. Like the physical stints, I was wide awake when the great operating doctor gently placed them in me. There is still need for more spiritual stints to be placed in me so that all of me can be fully assessable to the work of the Holy Spirit.
Thanks Beth for the reminder.
++May I always find you assessing me, opening me to your work in this present evil age.++