All Things New!

Ezekiel 36:26  I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.

The heart is used in Scripture as the most comprehensive term for the authentic person. It is the part of our being where we desire, deliberate, and decide. It has been described as “the place of conscious and decisive spiritual activity,” “the comprehensive term for a person as a whole; his feelings, desires, passions, thought, understanding and will,” and “the centre of a person. The place to which God turns.”

What a wonderful new year gift we find in Ezekiel’s prophecy. Perhaps today we should think today not of what we want to do for God but of what God wants to do for us. To see that God cares for us in all of our being - body, heart and souls - wanting to refresh us, invigorate us and call us back to life. Maybe we should pray and let God be God and think of what it means for us to be children of God.

Still today, in everyday conversation, if someone is merciless, we may say they are “stony-hearted” or “hard-hearted.” So we know what God was saying when he promised his people, through the prophet Ezekiel.

Charles Wesley puts this heart text in a beautiful hymn that says,

O for a heart to praise my God,
a heart from sin set free,
a heart that always feels thy blood
so freely shed for me.

A heart resigned, submissive, meek,
my great Redeemer's throne,
where only Christ is heard to speak,
where Jesus reigns alone.

A humble, lowly, contrite heart,
believing, true, and clean,
which neither life nor death can part
from Christ who dwells within.

A heart in every thought renewed
and full of love divine,
perfect and right and pure and good,
a copy, Lord, of thine.

Thy nature, gracious Lord, impart;
come quickly from above;
write thy new name upon my heart,
thy new, best name of Love. Amen