Skip to main content

Glass Heart

I was holding my fragile glass heart tonight.

"Will you please care for this?"  I asked around.

The world's response was to knock it out of my hands, and at the feet of Jesus though I wasn't aiming for Him.  The aroma from the heart, which was apparently a jar of perfume, was reaching His nose.  He found it pleasing to Him.

Though my hope was to keep the heart and never let it get broken, the fact that I didn't offer it to God in the first place suddenly came to mind.

"I should have handed it to the Father first...oh no, is He mad?" I thought.

Foolishly trying to fix the situation and bending down to gather the pieces and the oil, I felt a hand stop what I was doing.

"I desire mercy, not sacrifice," I was raised to my feet.  I was in His arms.  It seemed that was what He was after all along.

The sacrifice (though not entirely willful) made me all the more acutely aware of the fact that I do not love Christ as I should.  Only He can hold my heart and care for it like no one else could.

I now am sure of two things:

1)  "On hearing this, Jesus said, 'It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.  But go and learn what this means:  'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.  For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.'"--Matthew 9:12-13

Only His mercy can save, not my attempts at a sacrifice.

2)  "Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted"--Matthew 5:4

Oh, how sweet the comfort.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Tucker's Birth Story

Tucker Jason Rhys was born on October 30th, 2023 at 3:18pm in the afternoon though I say his birth story started four months earlier in June.  In June we were packing up our family and lives in Africa to come back to America for a year. With two small kids and me being six month pregnant, Steven and I still thought it would be worth the effort to stop in Paris for a layover and do a couple Frenchy things like eat a croissant and see the Eiffel Tower.  It’s a “perk” of the job I tell myself—every flight path inevitably goes through Europe. We booked tickets that took us through Paris and then onto America. After booking everything we hit a snag—Farrah’s passport was set to expire in September and apparently France requires three months of validity left on a US passport before giving a visa to visit their country. She only had two months left before she needed to renew hers. (I'm getting to the birth, I promise…) Up until that last week on our island as we were packing our bags ...

Alabaster Flask

What a privilege to have something so valuable to my heart that its very surrender is seen as the utmost form of worship. Abraham had Isaac. Hannah had her son. The sinful woman had the alabaster flask. The Father had the Son, and the Son had His very life. How grateful am I to have been given something so dear, very dear, to my heart that I may surrender it as worship to God. Maybe a few tears as well. "Now when Jesus was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper,  a woman came up to him with an alabaster flask of very expensive ointment, and she poured it on his head as he reclined at table.    And when the disciples saw it, they were indignant, saying, 'Why this waste?    For this could have been sold for a large sum and given to the poor.'   But Jesus, aware of this, said to them, 'Why do you trouble the woman? For she has done a beautiful thing to me.'"--Matthew 26:6-10

Questions

I asked God some questions this past week.  What I understand from reading Job, that’s a pretty scary thing to do.  I knew what I should think, but I didn’t want to just hear that.  I thought about what my answer would be to someone else asking that big “why?” question.  Then, I continued to inquire, “God, where were you when I was suffering and believing those lies?  Where.  Were.  You.”  I could suddenly relate to a person that refuses to believe in God because they don’t understand why or where God was when they were abused as a child.  Some are stripped of their innocence or affected by drugs and alcohol abuse without any cause of their own.  In my case though, being affected by insecurities and lies from childhood are typical in this world and others peoples’ situations are far worse.  As I was asking those questions and wrestling with God, I sort of expected a reprimand from Him.  I thought I would get the answer t...