The Parable of the Heart

When I was in kindergarten, the illustration in our workbook for the word 'sin' is shown above. It was depicted then as a heart with a hole. It reminded me of a parable...and an actual one.

I have a friend (probably the first one to comment this blog entry) who once has a very disturbing disability. She has a hole in her heart. It gave her difficulty to cope up with the fast-paced life of the modern era.

When she's happy, she couldn't  laugh as hard as the others do. When she's sad, she could not cry hard enough because it could only worsen her state and could lead to heart-attack and eventually, death. She became a burden in her family and it greatly affected her self-esteem and could have lessened her feeling of importance.

While the kids of her age were playing vigorous kinds of games, she preferred to play on her own relaxed way because she might put her life in jeopardy. She became a voracious reader because of her inability. It seemed like reading became her breakfast and dinner. She reads most of the time--novels, storybooks, name it and she might have read it too.

She needed hope because of her weakness. And Hope she has found when she began reading the very words uttered from the mouth of the One who created her. Coming from a Christian family, she reads the Bible very often. When she was young, she mastered the book of Genesis because her father would read both she and her sisters some stories before they sleep. The Spiritual milk of Salvation went in her system and she fell in love with the Savior, Jesus Christ. 

Her journey to the Kingdom of God jump started when she accepted Christ as her personal Lord and Savior. With God's guidance, she encountered the idea of deliverance. Eventually, she was delivered from her disability. Without any medical operation, her heart was healed and the hole was no more.

Now, my friend can laugh as hard as she can. She can also cry her heart out to her Father in heaven. She now has a joy that is abundant, a smile that is real, laughter that is jolly and tears that are kept in the heart of the Lord.

The story of my friend is a parable portraying the whole church. As what my kindergarten book depicted sin, everyone of us has a hole on our hearts. We all have sinned against a Holy God and we are worthy of death.

Living in sin is like living the way my friend used to live when she still has the hole in her heart.  We cannot do glorious things that the Sinless One could do. We cannot have REAL joy and all we were chasing for were just elusive and are not eternal. If we become sad, we are endangering ourselves death because the Bible says that worldly sorrow brings death. We are basically DISABLED if we have sin in our lives.

God loves us so much that He gave His only Son to us. And not just that, He also took from us our sins, shame, guilt, and all our DISABILITY. All we have to do is to accept Him as our personal Lord and Savior, just as my friend did.

Lord Jesus Christ delivered us from our old selves in the cross. He renewed our  broken and 'holed' hearts. He filled us with His Holy Spirit just like the way he sealed the holes in our heart. Sin is no more and so as our disabilities.

Living in Christ is like living the way my friend is currently living. With Christ in our hearts, we can have real joy and real ABILITY through Christ who strengthens us.

And that's the parable of the heart.