Divided Heart

Every human has been aroused to questions about the Divine. Furthermore, questions about self and family, friend and foe, success and failure and every other thing or person in between. Our hearts are all divided up by various perspectives. We are most often a puzzle of pieces that don’t fit rightly together….

The now grown woman of Ezekiel lingers at a crossroads. She considers the works of her Lover and she boils under the pressure of many questions. Questions about who and why and what if? Doubts about intentions. Fears about future security. The haunting of past shame. Why was I left for dead? Why was I unwanted? Is all of this a set up to abandon me again when I am at the height of satisfaction? Is this just a game? Does He really love me for me? Or am I just an expendable object? She considers much too long all of the injustices that once were. All of the unsettled arguments of her ancestry and birth. And she turns the wrong way.

Tamar, now embarrassed, hides away under dark shadows. She dwells much too faithfully upon her lack of virginity. She listens much too earnestly to the voice of accusation. What if you had been wiser to your brother’s intentions? Why did you present yourself so beautifully? What were you thinking? What were your intentions? How much did you desire what happened? How involved was your heart? And she never consciously re-enters the land of the living.

Ishmael festers underneath his wounded flesh. He is aroused to anger. Deep anger. For the day of his birth was not as it should be. No firstborn covenants for Ishmael. No firstborn inheritance. And the four walls of his heart echo with revenge. All of the voices of injustice stir him to shame, accusation and hate. You are not the promised one. But you are the firstborn. Why have they denied you your rights? You look like the fool here. Why don’t you forcefully take what is yours? And Ishmael persecutes his brother although his brother had no active part in the injustice. Ishmael continues to seek his justice today… .through revenge.

What about your questions? What about the questions and accusations you inherited from your ancestors? What of the injustices that have come to you? I, myself, have many that I could tell you about. Therefore, I safely assume that you do also… .perhaps many more. They are real. They are there. They have happened. Now what will you and I do?

Our hearts are typically all divided up by these questions. At any given moment you find yourself re-aroused by past and present injustice. Things you thought you forgot or know how to righteously handle. A voice is always present to encourage our meditation on the shame we feel, the embarrassment, the loss.

This is the crucible. The historical moment of choice. These are the times that we stand at the crossroad. These are the times when vision gets fuzzy. Rash choices are often made. And we have to do the obvious. Stop… .seek the voice of our Lover…. .and believe it. Sounds simple but it always takes real courage to let go of the injustice and trust Divinities undivided heart.

“…Give me an undivided heart…” Psalm 86:11.