I sat there on the hot
sidewalk in the summer of 2014, broken hearted. No words could describe the
pain of loneliness and anxiety I was feeling. Nothing made things better and no
amount of time seemed to heal my heart.
It sat on the sidewalk as a
wise friend encouraged me to do something that brought peace to my shattered
heart. She told me to imagine my heart as it felt. If I were to look at my
heart right now, what would it look like?
So I closed my eyes. I
imagined a weak heart, barely beating. Chunks of it were missing. There were
sticks smashed right through the center of it. There were rocks and dirt stuck
to it. The heart was filthy, un-whole, disgusting.
Next, she told me to imagine
Jesus taking my filthy heart and exchanging it with a brand new one. Pure,
clean, untouched, whole. I saw Jesus holding my now new heart. It was like a
pearl. His hands gently held it. It was pure and it was safe.
This image has stayed with me
for several years. I am reminded of how often we spend so much of our
time focusing on our brokenness. We focus on the hurt parts of our heart. And
we forget to remember that God has made us whole and new. He has given us a new
name, a new identity. Our lives are not defined by our losses, our heartbreaks,
or our failures. We are pure and we are His. When the Father looks on us, He
does not see a filthy, incomplete heart. He sees the pearl. Steady and
beautiful. And He holds it safely.
This truth allows us to move
away from our brokenness- our feelings of loneliness, rejection, and despair-
and into newness of life. Because no matter what we’ve done and no matter what
has been done to us, we are new. The Father looks on us with favor and lavishes
us with His love.
"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come:
The old has gone, the new is here!"
(2 Corinthians 5:17)
