Heart
-
The Road to Jerusalem is in Your Heart
Blessed are those whose strength is in you, in whose heart are the highways to Zion. Psalm 84:5 The heart is often under attack in the church. It seems that one verse in Jeremiah stands for the whole of scripture’s stand on the heart. “Your heart is deceptive and desperately wicked,” preachers tell me, but then I am told to guard my heart, for out of it comes the wellsprings of life, according to Proverbs. Seems contradictory. The New Testament is kinder to the heart, telling me to love others from the heart, to love God with a pure heart, and not to lose heart. And if my heart condemns…
-
In Defense of the Gift of Emotion
*I am reposting this blog about emotion because of a contemptuous response I recently received on Twitter. They castigated me for my post about feelings and positive thinking, informing me that being a Christian is about having faith, not feelings. I chose not to respond to them, but my heart often breaks for Christians who feel they must cut off their emotional lives. No wonder our art is not longer the driving force in the world, as it used to be. Emotions certainly must be filtered and examined. But in the end, while love is a decision, it is also a feeling. I wouldn’t marry a man who did not…
-
Three Questions That Lead to Self Forgiveness
After a decade of no contact, my sixteen year old daughter lived with her father for about six months. While I didn’t sleep a full night during that time, she seemed happy for the first three. After that, things began to go south rather quickly, and soon, she came home, to both of our relief. One day soon after, while we were at the grocery store, she mentioned that her whole life she had assumed that our divorce was her fault. She had never mentioned this to me, the idea that somehow my divorce from an abuser could be laid at her feet. But before I could begin my strenuous objections…
