Editor:
When we stop and think about it, the conditions of our heart are determined by the experiences we encounter throughout our life span.
Songs, poems, love stories reflect the joy and happiness we feel in our hearts.
What blessings we receive when we finish schooling, obtain a job, meet and marry our true love, have a family.
On the other side of the coin, however, life can deal a different deck of cards.
No one is ever immune from a catastrophic illness, an accident, going through a divorce, losing parents, siblings, spouses, or children.
In the NIV Study Bible (1995), there are 286 scriptured passages dealing with the heart from broken hearted, faint hearted, hard hearted, kind hearted, simple hearted, stout hearted and whole hearted.
Proverbs 3:5, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.”
Proverbs 15:15, “All the days of the oppressed are wretched, but the cheerful heart has a continual feast.”
Proverbs 17:22, “A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.”
Out of the goodness, grace and mercy of his heart, God sent down his Son to earth to carry out his plan of salvation for mankind.
In the Beatitudes in Matthew 5:8, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.”
When Jesus was asked which is the greatest commandment in the Law he replied: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment.”
Christ gives us abiding comfort and consolation in John 14:27 when he stated, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.”
Proverbs 4:23, “Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.”
In Biblical language the center of the human spirit, from which spring emotions, thought, motivations, courage and action — “the wellspring of life.”
Jerry Shook
Alliance, Ohio
