I believe that to be inspired, one needs to have an open mind. Not too difficult, right? The other thing that's needed is an open heart. Therein lays the rub! Open hearts are much more difficult to come by. Hearts are bruised, beat up, broken, turned away from love and can be turned to stone through hardships. Hearts can also give you courage you never dreamed possible, will lead you to love like Christ does, and if shared correctly can change the world.
I never thought of all of what a heart could be until my Daddy told me one day where he believed the heart very literally was. He made me sit down and think of where your heart is by asking the question: "Where is your heart?" I immediately, as most people do, thought of the heart beating in my chest but knew he was asking something a little more involved. In that question dawned the realization that my heart wasn’t where my "heart" came from! He must have seen the light turn on over my head because he said to me, with a smile on his face, "C'mon, Tonda, where is your heart?” I answered timidly, "In my brain or my mind?"
In his question lay a simple truth that people don’t think about too often. The location of where your "heart" is. Your physical heart is not the seat of your emotions. It’s a continually functioning muscle that you can’t even say you control though it beats steadily in your chest. Most of our bodily functions, if functioning properly, we don’t have the insight or the know how to try and coordinate to peak efficiency, let alone control one aspect of. It still makes me laugh when people say that they're in control of anything. You don't control how your body functions, how are you in control?
In deliberating on my father's question, I quite quickly discovered the mind that God gave you is where your heart lives. Your mind is the seat of all the things that make you "you" and is one of the few things you control.
It cannot be denied, no matter your religious preference, or lack thereof, that there is more to you than just a body. You are not just cells, molecules, DNA, blood, bones, and flesh. Inside you there is an inevitable truth that you are more.
The unfortunate thing about this is that people forget what they are. I believe that we are spirits that live inside a body. We can be influenced by and are highly aware of things in the spiritual realm because we are spirits ourselves. The Bible says in John 4:24, "God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth." and Genesis 1:26 states, "Then God said, Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness…" My Pastor has been drilling this in my head since I've been under his teachings. This is the center of my belief that we are spirits made by God. So I'm not just thinking wishfully when I say that I am of the same spirit that God is. I'm not delusional because I'm sure that I am more. All of these wonderful and amazing things that God made me can be found firmly seated in my mind. My chest, my hands, my feet, while they are all remarkably capable, are not where my heart lies.
The knowledge of what and where your heart is will lead you down a path of questioning (if you're anything like me and my "super thinker" buddies) that if God made me in his image, is my heart made in his image, too? You betta believe it… now, what is my "heart"?
I don’t claim to be an expert yet but, I can say that the journey into self and into the idiosyncrasies of how God has built me to be a direct conduit to Him is the most interesting thing my heart has heard in a long time.
I started this blog off with a completely different topic in mind… :) Ill blog again when God tells me what my "heart" really is.
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