Blessed are the Pure in Heart...

...for they will see God - Matt 5:8

pure

   /pyʊər/ Show Spelled[pyoor] adjective, pur·er, pur·est.

1. free from anything of a different, inferior, or contaminating kind; free from extraneous matter.

2. unmodified by an admixture.

3. of unmixed descent or ancestry.

4. free from foreign or inappropriate elements.

5. clear; free from blemishes.

EXPAND6. (of literary style) straightforward.

7. abstract or theoretical (opposed to applied).

8. without any discordant quality.

9. absolute; utter; sheer: to sing for pure joy.

10. being that and nothing else.

11. clean, spotless, or unsullied.

12. untainted with evil.

13. physically chaste.

14. ceremonially or ritually clean.

15. free of or without guilt.

16. independent of sense or experience.

heart

   /hɑrt/ Show Spelled[hahrt] noun

1. Anatomy . a hollow, pumplike organ of blood circulation...

2. Zoology . a. the homologous structure in other vertebrates...

3. the center of the total personality, especially with reference to intuition, feeling, or emotion.

4. the center of emotion, especially as contrasted to the head as the center of the intellect.
5. capacity for sympathy; feeling; affection.

EXPAND

6. spirit, courage, or enthusiasm.
7. the innermost or central part of anything.

8. the vital or essential part; core.

9. the breast or bosom: to clasp a person to one's heart.

10.  a person (used especially in expressions of praise or affection): dear heart.

11. a conventional shape with rounded sides meeting in a point at the bottom and curving inward to a cusp at the top.

12. a red figure or pip of this shape on a playing card.

13. a card of the suit bearing such figures.

14. hearts, a. (used with a singular or plural verb ) the suit so marked: Hearts is trump. Hearts are trump.

b. (used with a singular verb ) a game in which the players try to avoid taking tricks containing this suit.

15. Botany . the core of a tree; the solid central part without sap or albumen.

Blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God.

What does it mean to have a pure heart? It means that the vital or essential part of you, your core, is free from any extraneous matter, that it is unmodified from the way God created it, that it is without any discordant quality, that it is free of guilt.

Sounds good, hey?

I propose that, with a pure heart, not only will we see God in heaven, but we will see God in our lives right here, right now. Living is so much easier, so much less burdensome, when we see God working in our lives and in the world around us.

Have you even been for a nature walk with a 4 year old? I have. It was so cool. One fall afternoon my daughter and I went on an adventure in the park behind our house. For a while we stuck to the paved bike path but then she decided that we needed to go off-roading along the narrow dirt trails through the brush. Letting go of my adult sensibilities I started to see the the wonders of nature through her 4 year old eyes. The beauty of a flower, the excitement of an ant scurrying along a log, the comforting chirp of birds. She had no fear, just a childlike amazement and wonder at the world around her. To her life was simple. It was pure. Try looking at life as a 4 year old does and things start to make sense; even if you don't understand it you have trust in and are secure that your Father in heaven is working all things out for your good. 

So how do we get this heart?
There really is only one way to be purified and that is by the blood of Jesus. He is the one who washed away our sins and gave us a fresh start. And just like anything that's worth having, we need to work for it.

Keeping our heart pure is simple and straighforward - be wholehearted in our relationship with God. God says that to love him is to obey his commands. And what are the greatest command? To love him with all our heart, all our mind, all our soul and all our strength. There is no room for half-heartedness. In the book of Revelation Jesus told the church at Laodicea that he would spit them out of his mouth because they were luke-warm, half-hearted.

And Satan will do everything in his power to make us halfhearted and lukewarm.

Matthew 6:24 says that no one can serve two masters - either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. There is no half & half option. God either has our whole heart or he doesn't have it at all.

Jeremiah wrote that "the heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. who can understand it?" The heart is the place where our emotions reside. And emotions, quite honestly, Satan can manipulate very easily. It's beyond cure because we will never in this life be free from the fight to keep our emotions godly. Satan knows this and that's where he attacks. And his favourite weapon to use is the world.

The lure of the world can be so strong. As much as we were born with eternity in our heart, the world has been engrained into us from the moment we took our first breath. There will always be a battle in our heart between the understanding that God loves us and wants to spend eternity with us and the desire we have to satisfy our worldly cravings right here, right now.

The only way we can protect ourselves against the deceit in our heart is by fighting to keep our heart whole and on God's side, through reading and prayer and meditation and keeping our spiritual family close. Read; The word of God will judge the thoughts and attitudes of your heart and God will wash you with water through the word. Pray; we need to beg God to create in us a pure heart and renew his steadfast spirit within us. Meditate on the fruits of the Spirit until they are just as engrained and a part of you as breathing is. Ditch your pride and share your life and your struggles with your spiritual family. Alone you are easy pickings but, as we all know, a cord of three strands is not easily broken. Don't keep sin secreted away in your heart - be open with it and bring it into the light so God can take it away. Encourage one another daily so none of us may be hardened by sin's deceitfulness. Guard your heart, the core of your being, because it is the wellspring of your life. Everything that you think and say and do comes from here. When your heart is pure, everything in your life will be pure.

But the fight will be over before it's begun if you don't give it your all. Give God your whole heart and he will purify it for you and you will see him, not only in heaven, but in your life NOW.


This blog was inspired by chapter 11 of the book Pursuing Purity and Spiritual Beauty by Virginia Lefler.

Fertilizer Makes Things Grow: A Lesson from Job

Why do you complain to him that he answers none of man's words? For God does speak - now one way, now another - though man may not perceive it. -Job 33:13-14

[Apologies up front for the length...what started as a short summary of ideas gleaned from my current Bible study has turned into something akin to a PhD-worthy paper.]

I am not a gardener. I will never be a gardener. I joke about having a black thumb instead of a green one because, in my house, the ratio of plants that die to those that thrive is very, very large (or small...I don't know which it is, statistics is not my thing). But even in my lack of expertise I know that if you want a plant to grow to it's full potential it needs fertilizer. Something that brings much needed minerals and nutrients to those leafy greens and makes them leafier and greenier than they ever would become if left on their own. We see it all over - this is something I'm sure our farming ancestors figured out by observing nature. Which plants grew the most? The ones in the forest that were blanketed yearly with dead, decomposing leaves. Or the rich thicket of weeds that grew on dung heaps which had composted over time and become one with the soil.

Now how pleasant is fertilizer? Not very. How could it be? It is made out of manure - feces, excrement, crap (to be base) - or made out of dead and decomposing produce and/or foliage.  Mmmmm, appetizing. NOT. It's stinky and smelly and odorous, yet we put up with it because it produces a bigger, better, healthier version of whatever it is we are cultivating.

So...Why do we hate it so much when fertilizer when it is dumped on our life?

Huh? What? Yeah I hear the "what is she talking about" thought in your head. Let me explain...what do we spend most of our emotional energy on? All the annoyances we deal with day to day. The things in our lives that stink, frustrate, anger or tire us. All the "bad stuff" we would rather not deal with thank-you-very-much. Troubles come in many different sizes, shapes, textures and fragrances. It may be tangible to others, or maybe not. It could be related to many different things: health (physical, emotional, mental), relationships, finances, family, job or career...the list is endless. But why is it there? Are we being punished for something? Why do bad things happen in the world? Why do bad things happen to ME? [Warning: I'm about to tangent, but hang in there, there is a point, I promise!]

American humorist Erma Bombeck wrote a book entitled If Life Is A Bowl of Cherries What Am I Doing In The Pits? It's a pretty funny book, and an appropriate analogy to how we feel a lot of times going through life. If life is supposed to be so wonderful, then why do I feel like I'm down here wading through all this garbage, the spat out remnants of something other people were able to savour and enjoy? [Well isn't that funny...in order to get rid of the red squiggly you-spelled-it-wrong line under "savour" I had to switch my spell-check dictionary from English (United States) to English (Australia). I'm on the other side of the globe from Australia! Anything to keep the "u" in colour, flavour and favourite I guess. haha. But I digress...] My point is, most of the time the majority of us feel like we've ended up with the short end of the stick, having to deal with crap that we don't deserve. In my opinion, the minority who sail through life claiming to be trouble-free are either delusional, extremely shallow conflict avoiders or are just flat out lying to themselves. Some of the crap in our life we will acknowledge as brought upon ourselves due to poor decisions or planning, but for the most part we think "what did I ever do to deserve this?".

How on earth does this relate to Job??? The book of Job, from what I've gleaned, is all about looking at the big picture. Here was a man who had everything taken away from him: his kids were killed, his business was ruined, his health deteriorated quickly, he was shunned by family & friends & society, and his wife thought he was nuts! Murphy's Law's perfect storm. Everything went wrong. The biggest pile of manure ever was dumped on this man in the course of a couple days. (Job 1:13-2:10) Talk about holy crap!

But why did this happen? What on earth did Job do to deserve that?

As fish are caught in a cruel net, or birds are taken in a snare, so men are trapped by evil times that fall unexpectedly upon them. -Ecclesiastes 9:12

Just. Like. Job. So what do we do? How are we supposed to deal?

Yes, the crap that is dumped upon us, especially because of someone else's foolish, malevolent actions, is heartbreaking. I would never ever, ever, wish it upon anyone. But the fact of the matter is crappy things happen. Three things in life are inevitable: death, taxes and crap. It's unavoidable. And just like the first two things on that list, anyone who goes after, searches out and makes trouble for themselves is insane! In my opinion, anyway.

OK, back to Job… Here is a man who was blameless and upright in God’s eyes, who had the world’s largest pile of manure spread over his whole life. But why?  First, God was trying to make a point to Satan, to prove that Job feared him [God] because God is God, and not because God had protected Job and made his life comfortable (Job 1:8-11). Second, and this is where my point comes in, I propose that God chose Job so that a) Job would grow in his understanding of God and b) he [Job] could be an example for others to learn from.

If Job was considered by God to be blameless and upright (Job1:8) I’m sure we can safely assume that he worshiped God with all his heart, that he was kind to others and treated them with respect, and that he was diligent in observing the Jewish Law (or whatever was required at the time; the dating of the book of Job is usually put at around the time of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, so before God gave his people the Law through Moses.) Either way, whatever Job was doing, he was doing right in God’s eyes, therefore we can assume that others would have considered him a “good” person. I’m sure Job was fairly confident that he knew and understood God.

Throughout the book, Job’s consistent plea is for God to explain to him what he did to deserve this punishment. He did not understand where these troubles were coming from because, as far as he knew, he went over and above in his devotion to God. At the end of his rant Job finally accuses God of being unjust. Yikes. God himself weighs in at this point and blasts Job assuming that he understood what makes God tick.

Job was humbled and repented. Because he changed and humbled his heart before God, God blessed him with more than he ever had before all this manure happened. (Job 42:12-17)

Do you think Job was excited to go through all that crap? Yeah, I doubt it. BUT, considering the results, did it improve his life in the long run? Yeah, it did. I think about plants in a garden and wonder, if they had conscious thought, would they be super fired-up to have a heap-load of manure dumped on them? It stinks! But in the end that fertilizer causes them to flourish to their full potential.

Remember those cherry pits Erma Bombeck wrote about? Well what do you think gives a cherry its foundation? That’s right – the PIT. A cherry cannot exist without a pit. So maybe pits, which we conventionally view as only good for composting (which, not so ironically, is used as fertilizer) aren’t all that bad after all. Starting to catch my drift?

We will always feel and need to deal with the manure that comes as the consequence of our own foolish decisions, but what about the manure dumped upon us because of someone else’s actions, or plain rotten luck? (See there? “Rotten” luck? What are rotten things good for again? More composting!) Maybe, just maybe, the crap we go through in our life has been allowed for a reason. God knows our full potential and he wants to help us reach it, and means reaching him. God may not restore our health, finances, worldly possessions, relationships or whatever it is we’ve lost, but when we change our perspective and look for the lesson to be learned and embrace it, our joy, peace, happiness and our ability to deal flourishes.

So…my point? After reading through what I’ve rambled on about, I'm realizing there are two parts: 1) Crap = manure = fertilizer = an opportunity to grow and reach our full potential, but 2) in order to make use of the fertilizer in our lives we need to get our eyes off the tree of today that we see from our worldly human perspective, humble ourselves and try to glimpse the forest of our life that God sees and take advantage of the opportunity to grow and draw closer to God.

No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. -Hebrews 12:11

Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death. -2 Corinthians 7:10 (7:8-11)

He is wooing you from the jaws of distress to a spacious place free from restrictions, to the comfort of your table laden with choice food. -Job 36:16

I know that there is nothing better for men than to be happy and do good while they live. That everyone may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all his toil - this is the gift of God. -Ecclesiastes 3:12-13

There is something else meaningless that occurs on earth: righteous men who get what the wicked deserve, and wicked men who get what the righteous deserve. This too, I say, is meaningless. So I commend the enjoyment of life, because nothing is better for a man under the sun than to eat and drink and be glad. Then joy will accompany him in his work all the days of the life God has given him under the sun. -Ecclesiastes 8:14-15