Why the Open Heart Wins
He said something as a young husband that swelled with a wisdom he hadn't grown into yet—like a boy in his father's big shoes.
When we were in the tensions of those early months of the two becoming one—that three-legged race—I remember the long conversations of me not wanting to voice things aloud for fear of his discovery...fear that he would love me less if he saw me more.In one such fearful time, he said that sentence that cut the heart with a Love greater than his own:
“It's not the substance of your heart that matters most. It's the opening of your heart that's beautiful.”
In that moment, as he reached past his own wisdom and touched something in God, he spoke dignity to the opening, to the process, to the simple act of the reach toward fellowship - the emphasis on the outstretched hand, not the contents within it.
He's After the Reach of Our Heart
His words transcended him and took me straight to the Lord. For no matter the contents - the actual words and nit and grit of our prayers—it's the reach of the heart that the Lord loves most.
Today, this many years later, I've grown into this truth by much wearing of it, even as my young husband had to grow into the wisdom of his words.
And what strikes me most these days about this opening of the heart is simply how the Lord never wearies of it.
Sometimes we hesitate to open our hearts to Him just out of our own weariness with ourselves—that same song, 50th verse. We lose heart even to lift our voice again in prayer because we assume of God what we feel of ourselves and one another. We assume He's weary of us.Yet we assume wrong. We forget who He is.
As G.K. Chesterton reminds us,
"It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon...It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.”
He Never Wearies of Our Voice
We think the Lord grows weary of us even as we grow weary of ourselves and tire of one another. We forget that He knows no weariness in His entire being, even when we're fainting with it.
We want different words and different moods, different descriptions and different prayers. Of ourselves and of one another, we stiffen at the stigma of sameness. Yet the Lord, He loves it each and every time we open up our hearts to Him.
And the One who is fullness of Life never wearies or grows tired of hearing our same songs, and of renewing and refreshing our souls, grown old. To Him, an open, reaching heart is ALWAYS beautiful.
Every time we lift our eyes and our voice to Him, though we've no new words and are weary to bring Him that same heart cry, it's as though He leans in to say,
I was hoping you'd say those words again, that same song—the 50th verse. You thought that I would be weary of it, even as you are. But the opening of your heart is my favorite part. I never tire of words sung over when it’s the heart spread wide again. You forgot again just who I am—the Everlasting God who never grows weary or faint (Is. 40:28). With Me is the fountain of life (Ps. 36:9). I never tire. I never weary. I’ve still the dew of My youth (Ps. 110:3). You grow weary in your soul. Even your friends tire, for in their sin, they too are old. But I am not like you in this. Life is My name. Vibrancy is all that is Me. Your prayers, your heart, your reach, it is always new to Me! Let me see your face. Let Me hear your voice! For your voice is sweet and your face is lovely to Me (Song. 2:14).”
All of our excuses or hesitancies or reservations have no bearing when we realize that it's the reach of our heart toward Him that He's after. And though we hesitate to open it to Him, and though we grow tired of the sound, He never wearies of our voice (Heb. 11:6).
It's the opening of our heart that He wants.
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