Newness of Life

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)