Dying Heart?

Mortality.

Consider the word. By definition, it means “the state or condition of being subject to death; mortal character, nature, or existence.” Humans are mortals; we die. There are also things out there that can speed up the process of life. Things like: earthquakes hurricanes, car accidents, war, drugs, and suicide. Life is so fragile and just about anything can take it away. So very little in this world is in our control. We can make choices, take precaution, but it can all be swept away from us. Nobody is safe from the unexpected. Most of us realize this, and accept it as a fact of nature.

I, as an individual, can accept this. I know that I am currently safe from harm, and should the unfortunate happen, God has a home waiting for me. I fear not for my health, nor my mind, strength, soul, or any part belonging to me. But what about my heart?

Whenever one of my friends, or family, or -generally speaking- someone I love gets closer to the lines of mortality so does a piece of my heart. When they poison themselves with drugs or alcohol, a piece of my heart is getting poisoned. When they let the world overwhelm and feel like they have to cut themselves, a piece of my heart bleeds too. When they let themselves be abused in any way, shape, or form, then a piece of my heart takes that blow with them.

I know I’m not the only one that feels like this. I’m sure everybody who has someone they love in the hospital, at war, or at risk from their own behaviors has a piece of their heart hurting for them. And it hurts badly. It hurts badly because it’s not something we can control. As much as we’d like to we cannot simply take their suffering from them, and replace it with wholeness, safety, and the embrace of God.

Imagine how Abraham felt when his only son, Isaac, who surely had a big piece of his father’s heart, was whom God told him to kill as a sacrifice to him. I am not a parent. But I can see that the love between a parent and their child can be one of the greatest of all. I could not see myself having to kill my own child to prove my love to the Lord. A child surely takes up a huge piece of their parent’s heart. So having to kill that piece seems too hard to try to live without. Yet Abraham did as he was told.

“And Abraham picked up the knife to kill his son as a sacrifice. At that moment the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven,

‘Abraham! Abraham!’

‘Yes,’ Abraham replied. ‘Here I am!’

‘Don’t lay a hand on that boy!’ the angel said. ‘Don’t hurt him in any way, for now I know that you truly fear God. You have not withheld from me even your son, your only son.’” [Gen. 22: 10-12 (NLT)]

Did you honestly think God would hurt something so precious to his chosen one? God was testing him, but not torturing him. Sometimes we feel tortured by the circumstances in our lives and what people put us through. But what so many of us fail to realize is that GOD IS THERE TO HELP US AND THE ONES WE LOVE. We cannot WITHOLD them from him. Now I’m not saying sacrifice your loved ones. Do the thing that replaced sacrifices in the New Testament, PRAY!