Tin-girl

I believe that certain life experiences can create a calloused heart. The wounded try very hard to let misguided insults just roll off - but in so many cases, the injuring words are like pressing your fingers into guitar strings; the pain only goes away because you can't feel it through your roughened fingertips. It's still there, and maybe still doing damage, but the musician is oblivious.

Who would forget words like, "I haven't loved you for a long time..."

"...I've never loved you..."

"...You never made me happy..."

"...If that's how you feel about this then I'm not even going to try..."

Abandonment. Rejection. Wounds.

For a long time, I've not allowed anything too close. I still don't want anybody close - but ever so gently, God is chipping away at my heart.

Two verses that echo each other are found in Ezekiel:

11:19 I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh.

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.

As the Lord works on my spirit, he's making me more human and more like him at the same time. Because my non-stone heart? It's made of his flesh.

The covenant of the old Testament was written in stone, but the new covenant, the hadesh covenant, will be written on my heart. To be renewed and rebuilt is not to change the original, but to bring new life to it. Just how the moon is not "new" every month, but only seen in a new light. The new testament didn't come to change the old; rather, it came to reflect the truths and rebuild it. Under his new word, I will live according to his will because I desire to. He's giving me his heart.

He's breaking it for what breaks his own. We will have one heart in the end. Heart status? Maybe 42% original.