Thoughts from a Wandering Heart

Summer is in full swing here in San Carlos, which means a bit of a slower pace - thanks largely due to the temperatures in the mid-30's with high, HIGH humidity!  Preparations continue as we look ahead to the fall and the coming school year.  I'm packing my bags to spend some time in Manitoba over the next month and hope to see many of you over the next several weeks!  Here's some midsummer thoughts from this morning, some reflections from a wandering heart...see if you identify...

There’s something within our nature that pulls us towards complacency - at the very least spiritual complacency. I suppose it is simply our human nature - bent towards evil (which often looks innocent on the surface.)  But our tendency is to live without You, disregarding You, in isolation from You, essentially replacing You with any number of things other than You.  This has always been the error.

I believe that we are all deep pits, black holes with a tremendous appetite.  We consume and we consume because that was how we were made - not complete but empty, essentially lacking in and of ourselves.  There is a negative value of pressure, one that always pulls on the surrounding environment, sucking in whatever it can because of this deep void within us.  There is only one thing that can fill us to completion, to bring us to that point where we are no longer lacking but overflowing, but it is only You who fills us to that measure and only You who possibly can.  That’s how large and deep this void is within us.

The reality of our appetite does not often help us though discern what it is we really long for and really need.  So many things are offered to fill us up; so many things disappoint, and yet we continue in this quest, searching down mistaken paths.  Why does my appetite for You so easily get diverted to other things?  Why do other things hold such a sway over me sometimes?  Why am I content just to dabble at the edges rather than fully submerse myself in You?  It does not make sense, but once again our human nature was never known for its wisdom: our default gravitates away from You.

A part of the hymn Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing sums up this battle within us and how to respond to this grim situation: that what we truly need is the very thing our nature shuns.  What can we do?  What hope is there for this situation?  What can we do other than to cry to God for help?

Oh to grace, how great a debtor 

 Daily I’m constrained to be

 Let They goodness like a fetter 

 Bind my wandering heart to Thee

 Prone to wander, Lord I feel it

 Prone to leave the God I love

 Here’s my heart, oh take and seal it

 Seal it for Thy courts above!

What hope would we have would it not be for You?  What chance would we have if it would not be for Your grace and Your endless patience with us?  Where would we be if we had not found favour in Your eyes (favour alone by the cross of Christ!). But we find these things without measure, seemingly endless in their supply.  They do not run out because You do not have limits; they are infinite in magnitude because You are infinite in magnitude.  From Mount Zion, the perfection of beatify, God shines in glorious radiance! (Psalm 50:2)