I didn't get to go to Texas this year for Thanksgiving, but did get to hang out with a great family about an hour and half north of Atlanta. Despite some traffic I had a great drive there, through some uncharted territory for me - which is always fun. I am very blessed to have a navigation system that allows me to just drive, not really care where I am going or how I am getting from A to B - but I can drive and ponder and wonder.
On this particular drive I saw an unusual amount of abandoned homes - and it wasn't due to the latest housing market downturn, but rather these homes have not been lived in for years. The famous GA Kudzu plant growing all over many I couldn't help but wonder what happened? Was it a financial issue the family had? How could a house just go cold - no interaction - no upkeep - no Thanksgiving meals.....then all of a sudden it hit me - could this be the case with an individuals' heart? And louder it rang, my heart?
Could it be abandoned? Forgotten? Would I, the "land owner," recognize it's significance and let it go? In certain seasons I know this has been true, it's tiring to actually stay tuned to your heart. It takes quite, good conversations, listening, struggles, understanding who it is God says I am to actually have a barometer as to how your/my heart is doing.
I blame busyness, but it's no real alibi. It is an unknowing culprit sure, but the part of my heart that wants to be known, loved, not abandoned sometimes loses to the heart that wants nothing to do with warmth, or friendly faces - rather it wants dark, secrets, it's own "law"......
No real conclusion here except for the fact that we need be ware of our own heart's wanderings, to abandon your own heart is an option you have. It's one the old self desires stronger than anything, the old self is put to death by the new self that is Christ.
"Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life" - Prov 4:23
1 comment:
Roy, I have been thinking a lot about this lately. And the thing that is so scary is the subtlety with which events transpire that lead to (maybe years later) a dilapidated or abandoned heart. I have been reading Pilgrim’s Progress, by John Bunyan, and there is an episode where Christian and his companion come across a “place where they saw a way put itself into their way, and seemed withal to lie straight” and as they go on they find that the way that seemed “to lie straight” “by degrees turned, and turned them so from the City [of God] that they desired to go to”. Few of us, if any, would ever choose the dilapidated, abandoned house/heart or the way that is so far off of our desired path, if offered it from the beginning. However, we do accept one small step toward something that we may not even think is so undesirable, something we may think is helping us or protecting us, or better for us.
For me it came in wanting to protect myself from being hurt by those around me. So I put up walls of protection against people. “Don’t expect anything, Joanna, and they can’t hurt you.” Which doesn’t seem all that bad right, self-protection isn’t horrible! But I found myself several years later having let that belief system about people infiltrate my belief system about God. I had become a person who had begun to believe that the God who created me, died for all my crap, pursued my wretched heart and redeemed it, was somehow unworthy of my trust. All because I took one little step down a long path after being disappointed by a few people I didn’t even care about now.
In Pilgrim’s Progress, we find that Christian and his companion did not enter on “the way” without encouragement. They met a man called the Flatterer who played to their desires and deceived them. Additionally, we find that they had directions, a “note of the way”, to help them to know the right way to go, but they did not use them.
Heed the note of the way and beware the Flatterer.
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