Spiritual Anatomy

Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life. -- Proverbs 4:23

The heart gets mentioned with great frequency in Scripture.  It’s probably one of the most common words, and it is almost always metaphorical because there is no better shorthand way to get at this thing.  The pump in my chest is the spring of my physical life.  The physical heart quickens and sustains the body.  It’s a good idea to protect the physical heart with armor if one is going to go into battle. 

Our spiritual life, too, has a source and a wellspring.  As with the body’s blood pump, it is wise to protect and guard the heart from the arrows and missiles of fear, worry, and anxiety.  In Ephesians chapter 6, we have the well-known passage about the whole armor of God, the primary pieces being the helmet of salvation, the breastplate of righteousness, and the shield of faith.

To protect the heart, requires that we vigilantly turn our eyes inward toward the Lord who is seated there.  We have to mix metaphors a little but not really.  The heart is the temple, the sanctuary, or the holy place of God’s dwelling.  The temple exists to teach us about the heart. 

As blood flows out from and back to the physical heart, so the life of God radiates from His presence in the spiritual heart.  The outflowing red bloods cells bear life-giving oxygen, a result of in-breathing, or inspiration.  The cells return through the lungs carrying the products of metabolism, including carbon dioxide to be expelled. 

The life of God carries with it grace and mercy, wisdom and love and joy.  As that life returns, it bears thankfulness, worship and praise to be offered up to the Lord by the Spirit. 

This is our most vital connection.  Everything else can pass away, come and go, succeed or fail, and we will be all right.  Weeping or laughing, this is my life.    

Sleep-walking Toward Gomorrah

The hearing ear and the seeing eye, the LORD has made them both.  Love not sleep, lest you come to poverty; open your eyes, and you will have plenty of bread. – Proverbs 20:12-13

The Bible tells us often to wake up: 

Wake up from your drunken stupor, as is right, and do not go on sinning. For some have no knowledge of God. I say this to your shame (1 Corinthians 15:34).

[F]or anything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says, Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you (Ephesians 5:14).

On the other hand, sleep can be a good thing.

Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.  Unless the LORD watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain.  It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives to his beloved sleep (Psalm 127:1-2).

There is more than one kind of sleep and more than one kind of bread.  The sleep against which the proverb warns is the closing of our eyes and ears to the spiritual nature of our existence.  It is to dream that we are mere primates, clever apes and intelligent beasts.  That we can see we are more than animals is a gift of God.  Our spiritual senses testify to the Spirit just as our eyes are proof of the existence of light. 

If we close our eyes to the true nature of our existence, we will live impoverished lives, always hungering for some missing nutrient, no matter how much bread and beef and beer we consume. 

If we open our eyes, however, we will find, to our everlasting joy, that the Bread of Life is ours and in abundance.  All the true, honorable, righteous, and lovely desires of the spirit within us will find satisfaction and fulfillment. 

The world lives in a nightmare, somnolent and senseless.  Like all dreamers, their situations, motivations, and actions are often bizarre and irrational.  When we are surrounded by such, we may come to wonder if we are not the sleepers.  A few minutes of the evening news is usually sufficient to convince me otherwise.   

And You Don't Even Have to Dance Like Fred Astaire

Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat!  Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.  Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?  Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. – Isaiah 55:1-2

We have patent leather, fake fur, artificial flavors, and even imitation bacon bits.  So much of what we see is staged and choreographed and photoshopped.  Next to the dentist my wife goes to there is one of those places where they do Botox injections and other similar treatments which attempt to defeat the forces time and nature.  The other day my wife went to see her dentist, and I decided to wait in the parking lot because they had some television show blaring in the waiting room.  I hadn’t really noticed the “MAACO For Make-overs” place until a reasonably attractive lady got out of her car and, instead of going into the dentist’s office, headed in for a fresh paint job or something.  It left me wondering what she looked like before -- or if this was before. 

Most of us have come to understand that "livin’ on spongecake" is not nutritionally viable, long-term.  Eating things that aren’t really food can be detrimental to our health.  Even more dangerous to our spiritual health is swallowing that which masquerades as truth.  We have direct access to God through His word and through prayer.  We can speak to Him and hear from Him.  It costs us nothing.  The Lord offers us His grace, His mercy, and His forgiveness through Christ.  It is free to us because the price has already been paid on the Cross. 

Yet in our pain, in our hunger and thirst for righteous, in our craving for authenticity, meaning and purpose in our lives, we will waste our time and our resources pursuing illusions and sawdust lies that will no more satisfy us than drinking saltwater will quench a castaway’s burning thirst.  I am as guilty as anyone of letting the world tell me what will make me happy when all that makes life worthwhile cannot be bought with silver and gold. 

Life itself, represented by water in the verses above, is a free gift to us.  Wine speaks of the Holy Spirit which we receive by faith.  Milk and bread remind us of God’s revelation in its various forms, from nature to the written word to the Incarnation, open to all who are willing to accept the truth. 

We work and we strive and we battle.  You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask (James 5:2).  All we have to do is ask.  And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.  For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened (Luke 11:9-10).  As I have been told regarding the tense of the verbs in the original language, you could say, Ask and keep on asking, and you will receive and keep on receiving.  I do not think it is possible to max out because Jesus Himself said, To the one who has, more will be given (Luke 8:18).  

Why are we trying to live on lies?  Ask.