i HEART you

For years my obsession has been with the HEART.

When you Google "heart", you'll get a wide variety of results: health websites, Wikepedia explanations, Google images of the heart, a link to AMA. And no one would dispute the actual definition of the heart: a muscular organ found in most vertebrates that is responsible for pumping blood throughout the blood vessels by repeated, rhythmic contractions.

But I’ve spent the last year looking for a different definition of the heart – and Google has failed me. I want to understand what the non-organ definition of the heart really is. That form of the word is all through the bible and we use it so often in everyday language.

At a football game – "Kid's got a lot of heart …"
Crying in the rain – "You broke my heart!"
To a friend – “What does your heart tell you?”

I want to know what God meant when he said David was a man after his own heart. I want to know why everything that comes out of my mouth flows from the heart according to Luke 6:45 – and what exactly does that mean?

My family is largely impacted by the physical heart and all its dynamics. I guess that’s where the obsession started. And I’m positive this is what drives my almost manic fascination with the heart.

But maybe it started even before that. Maybe my enthrallment with the heart started when I was 8 – when someone taught me how to ask Jesus into my heart. I understand what that means because the Holy Spirit testifies and convinces me that it’s true. And whether I get it or not doesn’t really matter – it is what it is, even without a definition.

But I still have dumb questions that I entertain myself with:

How come we don’t ask Jesus into any other organ? We ask him to USE our hands, feet, mouths and minds . . . but we INVITE Him INTO our heart. WHY the heart?

And why didn’t Jesus invite us into His heart? Wouldn’t it make sense that we’d go into His heart instead of the other way around? I know I’m accepted, adopted, grafted in – but do you understand what I’m saying?

Told you they were dumb questions.

I’m attempting to blog about thoughts I’ve been having for a year now. I have pages and pages of notes, questions, thoughts, and revelations and nothing is clear yet. I’m a smart girl, but the questions keep coming and God keeps stirring my heart about these weird inquiries.

HA, see I said it – heart. I didn’t even mean to say that. But God does stir my heart – I know what that means, but cannot define it. Sigh . . . off to my thinking chair.