predictable cloying comforts
I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh. Then they will follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. Ezekiel 11:19-20
As the heart is, so is the person. The heart is the soil from which divine plants grow; it is the source of all the power that is needed for their growth. That is why the seed of God’s word must first be planted in the heart. For the same reason a mere outward conformity to the law on the basis of fear is worthless. If it doesn’t stem from the heart it is hypocrisy; it is pharisaic.
The heart must be tender, kind, and good. We must be warmhearted if we are to please God. Therefore, look to your heart. Whoever understands God’s will in his heart and is sensitive to it, will carry it out. Put effort into it—stir up this feeling you have in your heart for God, so that it lights up your whole being and turns you into a fulfilled and genuine person of God!
Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt, from Family Prayers for Each Day.If it doesn’t stem from the heart it is hypocrisy; it is pharisaic. - I love that. It's all about the heart and the heart is all about actions and choices. It is there that we learn what we really believe. Don't be like the "too many" that are content to say "We believe!" but live it in a measly way.
Go help the heartless dispassionate one's! Those who are more intent on comfort and confirmity. Busy about the business of smoothing the way and points of order - making everyone alike - removing contention the heart of a thing and calling it unity. Making everything a choking beige and extinguishing the fires of fervor.
We are the church of God! Those for whom passion won eternity! Those who despite the bleak darkness that swirls around them can drip with joy!
God help us for loving our safety and predictable cloying comforts, too afraid of our own shadows to step up to the position we own in Christ. This cancerous ease that turns us into meager and exiguous shades of what Christ Himself died for us to become.
"God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them.....Man - that great and wonderful living creature, more precious in the eyes of God than all other creatures! For him the heavens and the earth, the sea and all the rest of creation exist. God attached so much importance to his salvation that he did not spare his own Son for the sake of man..." (http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p1s2c1p6.htm)
May God grant that we all look to our hearts and stir them to live in grace, gusto and the marrow of our faith - leaving off comfort more quickly and risking more of what we only suppose we own for that which we truly do!
