“A good person out of the store of goodness in his heart produces good, but an evil person out of a store of evil produces evil. From the fullness of the heart, the mouth speaks.”
What could be the challenges to the human heart? When we talk about the heart, we talk about emotions, compassion, temperament, kindness, feelings, sensitivity, sympathy, empathy, and many more positive things. The heart is the one responsible for all these feelings and state of the spirit. It is almost obvious to say that, if we only let our hearts rule our very life, we will turn out to be good, kind, merciful and compassionate beings. But we know that, even if the heart is the nucleus or the center of our being, it is not the one who is actually running the affairs but it is the mind… the mind which had been so clouded by many false beliefs, irrational attitudes, and a very corrupt and misguided mentality.
In today’s world, our hearts are being challenged to be strong against all the wicked and evil things that are out there to destroy our whole being. Our minds are sometimes defeated by the innovativeness of the satanic forces in our world today. Deceit, lies, and fraud are spreading like wildfire today and fanned by the social media platforms. There are numerous avenues of charitable activities which most people are blinded by the belief that indeed, these programs are for their well-being and support. But the truth is that corrupt officials benefit more than anybody else.
Some government programs are succeeding in this trade. They are trying to coerce the lowly ones to accept dirty money, in the guise that the money is intended for the poor. In the process, they will enrich themselves from that same money for the poor and learn the ultimate deception by stealing the money intended to uplift the lives of the unfortunate ones.
If Satan will stick to his age-old style of harassment, stealing, killing and obvious fraud, he will not succeed, so now he uses a style that is pro-poor! Sad to note that some corrupt leaders and government officials let their minds rule their beings, they easily fall into the sweet and worldly temptation to acquire more wealth and power.
Now the challenge to the human heart is not on how it will continue pumping our blood to circulate in our whole physical being and give us life but rather the challenge lies in the fact that our hearts must beat the odds that can break us and ruin everything that we have worked hard for.
Our Christian belief suggests that our ultimate end is to be like Christ and have a heart that is patterned to that of Christ especially in the name of charity, forgiveness, and compassion. We struggle every day to attain this noble goal, though sometimes there are fallbacks, but still, we always decide to get up and manage our very life once again. This is one good thing in us because we have that unwavering trust and hope that God will always see us through.
But then, even with that firm faith that God will never abandon us especially in our moment of tribulations, we really must cooperate with the promptings of the Spirit so that His grace will be at work in us. Without our cooperation, God can do nothing because He had given us the gift of freedom and that gift was given unconditionally. This is another challenge to the heart… how will it be able to convince the mind that genuine freedom is not doing what one wants to do but rather freedom is doing what God wants us to do.
Ruthless criminals, maniacs, killers, drug-lords, and all other agents of death are branded as “heartless” beings. Why? Because in what they do, there is no more trace of goodness in them. They are not over and above any animal or wild beast because they all share, and are all under one principle that govern all their actions and behaviors… self-preservation.
The heart of Jesus was pierced with a lance, and blood and water flowed from His side to give life to the lifeless and heartless generation that sent Him straight into His death on the cross. He did not try to invoke His right to self-preservation because, being God, self-preservation does not belong to the vocabulary of the Gods. What the three persons in one God know is not self-preservation but the consummation of it all in the name of love. Because of love we have our life, and the ultimate challenge for the human heart is to share that love so that others may also have life because of us.