DayBreaks for the Week of 1/29/24 – Getting to the Heart of the Matter

Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my concerns. See if there is any offensive way in me; lead me in the everlasting way. – Psalm 139:23-24

John chapter 4 tells the story of the woman at the well and her encounter with the Messiah. It is a fascinating story on so many fronts, especially given the religious and cultural norms of the time.

After a small bit of chit-chat about water and thirst, the discussion suddenly gets very serious when Jesus tells her to go get her husband. Admitting that she didn’t have a husband, Jesus seems to get rather brutal and appears insensitive when he reveals her marital status and history.

Couldn’t Jesus have been more tactful? Why be so blunt about it? If it had been me, I would have approached it more gracefully, I think.

But Jesus knew this woman, and he loved her. So, he did what was best for her: he went straight to the source of her thirst. Her life had been filled with inconsistencies, rejection, loss of hope and love, perhaps betrayal, a life filled with shame and probably no small helping of guilt. She was thirsty, but all the things she had tried have been disappointments.

You see, we have to be made to confront ourselves and our need honestly. It isn’t until we recognize the truth about our thirst that Jesus can help us. He gave the woman dignity and something that could fill the aching hole in her soul.

Here’s another beautiful truth: not only did it help her, but many in the village found their thirst cured, too.

If it seems that Jesus is being too hard and insensitive with you, it could be because you’ve not yet honestly been forced to confront the truth about yourself yet. Let me encourage you to pray for the Spirit to search your heart to reveal what is unclean and needs to be confessed and forgiven. It is only then that you can find the Living Water that can quench your thirst forever.

PRAYER: Lord, open our hearts and reveal to us the truth that we need to acknowledge so that which we so long for can be found!  In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Copyright 2024 by Galen C. Dalrymple.

DayBreaks for Christmas Day, 12/25/22 – God’s Heart Transplant

Today I’m sharing something that Ann Voskamp wrote.  The background: 13-year-old Taylor Storch and her family had gone to Colorado for a little skiing. Taylor laughed loud coming down the mountain, but then she fell – right down a straight rocky slant of the earth. Ann continues: “By nightfall, she was gone, slipped off this earth and Home, and her parents, Tara and Todd, were signing papers to give away Taylor’s still-warm heart.

They ended up giving Taylor’s heart to a woman, Patricia Winters, in Arizona whose heart was failing so badly that she couldn’t get off the couch anymore.

When someone called to tell Ann and her family about the accident, Ann wrote: “There’s been ugly sin this week and there’s been dead weary and there’s been more than a few moments I haven’t known how to go on.

“Taylor’s mama had only one request.” I lean against the window sill, head against the cool pane, tell my Mama what Max had said, how he had shown us a photo of Taylor with her mama. How Taylor’s mama had called Patricia Winters and asked her if she could come hear her heart.

“Oh my.” Mama murmurs what only a mama can feel. The clock’s ticking on the wall.

“And Max had told us how Taylor’s mama flew from Dallas to Phoenix and knocked on Patricia Winters’ door and Patricia Winters walked right past the couch and she opened the door and she opened her arms and she welcomed them in. And Taylor’s mama fell into her arms and the two mothers just held each other, Taylor’s heart beating right there next to her weeping Mama’s.

‘And then Patricia Winters reached over and handed Taylor’s Mama a stethoscope.

“And she laid that stethescope up against Patricia Winters and she could hear it, right there in Patricia as clear as a beckoning bell: Thrum. Thrum.

“Taylor’s mama could hear it loud and long, right there in her ears…Thrum.

“Like a thunder vibrating right through her — Thrum.

“Her daughter’s still-beating heart.

“Oh… I can’t…” Mama chokes out the words. “I can’t even imagine.”

“Can’t imagine. Can’t Believe…  Miracle.

“And then Max had asked us slow and quiet. “What was Taylor’s Mama really hearing?”

“It indwells a different body, but that heart is the heart of her girl…. ” Max said. “And when God hears your heart, that’s what He hears — the still-beating heart of His Son.”

“Your heart can’t forgive the tactless no-so-great Aunt, your heart can’t forgive the words that should never have been said, your heart can’t forgive the remark that was more like a blade and left a mark how many years later. Your heart can’t forgive the step-mother, the side joke, the backhand, the over-the-top family that just gets under your skin.

“Your heart can’t forgive. That’s why He gave you His.

“When you don’t think you can forgive what she’s said about you —-

“When you don’t think you can forget what he’s done to you –

“When it’s His heart beating in you — you can forgive in a heart beat.

“I look up from the sink. The Christmas tree is there by the fireplace — and it’s right there, what all the hard relationships, gatherings, families need at Christmas: the Tree is where God’s grace does heart transplants: God takes broken hearts —- and gives you His.” – Ann Voskamp, A Holy Experience blog

PRAYER: Thank You, Lord Jesus, for not just becoming like us in the Incarnation, but showing us Your heart, and giving us Your heart!  May we hear Your heart beating a little stronger in each of us this Christmas.  In Jesus’ name, Amen.

DayBreaks for 1/19/22 – Hearts of Stone or Flesh?

From the DayBreaks archive:

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.

“In 1944 Life magazine published a photo essay of a fox hunt in Holmes County, Ohio.  The foxes lived in the woods and ate mostly mice and crickets, but sometimes also chicken and quail.  This, the story explained, ‘made the brave men of Holmes County angry because they wanted to kill the quail themselves.’  So, one Saturday about 600 men and women and their children got together and formed a big circle five miles across.  They all carried sticks and started walking through the woods and fields, yelling and baying to frighten the foxes, young and old, out of their holes.  Inside this diminishing circle the foxes ran to and fro, tired and frightened.  Sometimes a fox would, in its anger, dare to snarl back, and it would be killed on the spot for its temerity.  Sometimes one would stop in its anguish and try to lick the hand of its tormentor.  It, too, would be killed.

“Sometimes, the photo showed, other foxes would stop and stay with their own wounded and dying.  Finally, as the circle came closer together, down to a few yards across, the remaining foxes went to the center and lay down inside, not knowing what else to do.  But the men and women knew what to do.  They hit these dying wounded with their clubs until they were dead, or they showed their children how to do it.

“This is a true story.  Life reported and photographed it.  It happened for years in Holmes County every weekend.

“Today we cringe at such cruelty, yet we have a fox hunt of our own…”. – Brennan Manning, Abba’s Child

I’m appalled at this story.  I can’t imagine such cruelty.  But Manning is right – we have our own fox hunts – plenty of them, and they are near and dear to our hearts.  Is it not a fox hunt when we fail to have compassion on those with diseases of the body brought about because of sinful lifestyle choices, whether it is alcohol, drugs, STD’s, or other illnesses?  Aren’t we more apt to carry a club than a first aid kit when it comes to some of the members of our society?  Tragically, it’s even true in the church itself – instead of band-aids and ointments, we carry sticks.  The saddest thing of all: we know how to use them.

Manning continued, after speaking about how most Christians react to those afflicted by AIDS: “…just ask those who are afflicted with AIDS.  Sadly, too many with AIDS have wondered if they had any alternative but to go to the center of the circle and lie down and die. 

“Where are we in that circle?  Where are you?  Where would Christ be?”  I think I know the answer to the last question: he’d be in the middle with them, tending to their hurts, loving them all the time.

2 Cor. 3:3 – You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts. 

May our hearts be soft and receptive to the Spirit of the living God.

PRAYER:  For all we have wounded and hurt when we should have had compassion, forgive us!  Melt our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh, warm and loving! In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Copyright 2022 by Galen C. Dalrymple. ><}}}”>

DayBreaks for 1/17/22 – The Border Between Good and Evil

I’m one of the lucky ones with heart trouble.  I can still have salt!  My blood pressure is just fine, thank you, and so I’m not on a restricted diet in THAT sense.  (I must say, however, I’d give up the salt for a few steaks now and then!)  I love salt as a seasoning.  It just seems to make food taste MUCH better. 

In his book, C. S. Lewis for the Third Millennium, Peter Kreeft had an interesting insight about us “traditionalists” when he wrote: “…I want to interject a word of caution to my fellow traditionalists.  It is the fear that traditionalists run the same kind of risk in idealizing the past as both neo-conservatives and liberals (what strange bedfellows!) run in looking benignly at the present and the future.  Looking back is a posture that has been known to be very dangerous to one’s health, especially if one is on a salt-free diet: remember Lot’s wife.

“So let us look to the future.  Is it not time to be optimistic now that the Iron Curtain has fallen with an iron thud?  To answer this question, let us ask two other questions, one about us and one about ‘them’.

“The one about us: Were we more moved by the fear of God or the fear of Gorbachev?  Were we wrestling against principalities and powers in the Kremlin or in Hell?  Do we understand Solzhenitsyn’s line about the border between good and evil running not between nations but down the middle of our own souls?

“And the question about ‘them’ is: What kind of freedom was uppermost in the minds of most of the masses who poured through the newly opened Berlin Wall?  Was it spiritual freedom, or even intellectual freedom?  Did they, like the wise men from the East of old, come West seeking Christ?  Or condoms?  Did they pour into churches?  Or porno shops?  What excited them about the West?  Did they buy bibles or toilet paper?  What freedom was legislated in Romania as soon as it had killed its dictator, who was guilty of enormous crimes?  It was the freedom to kill those who are guilty of no crime at all except being in the way of someone who was bigger and already born. 

“So let us look to the real battle, not to the fake one.  Now that that silly little temporary distraction called Communism is dead…we can get back to the battle that should have been bothering traditionalists all along…namely, the Western barbarianism within.”

Ouch.  I must confess that I probably worry more about Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Korea, Vladimir Putin and the physical fates of my children and grandchildren than I do about the souls of the lost.  And that says a lot about me.  Kreeft’s message is a strong one, but one we all need to hear and think about.  The battle began millennia ago.  Now it is our turn to serve in the Lord’s army.  Will we heed his call to take up arms?

PRAYER:  Feed the fire in our souls so we are more passionate about the lost! In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Copyright 2022 by Galen C. Dalrymple. ><}}}”>

DayBreaks for 3/11/20 – A Lesson From COVID-19

COVID-19 (referred to simply as coronavirus by the media) is all over the news…and virtually all over the world and spreading. While it could be much more deadly than it has been, it is still a very serious issue especially for the elderly with underlying medical issues. It seems the world is learning as it goes on this.

As I was thinking about COVID-19, I was impressed yet again with several things:

1. How precarious life is – we read stories about disasters, about meteors that pass by the earth rather than colliding with it, about war and injustice. All these things can serve as reminders to us that our reunion with you could be just around to corner for any of us and we need to be ready to take that journey at any time;
2. How dangerous things can be that you can’t even see with your eyes – the coronavirus is tiny – as are all viruses – and yet it has caused the death of hundreds, made over 100 thousand sick, disrupted businesses and economic systems in ways that nothing has during my life. While we may fear the hulking menace in the dark of the night – fearing we may awaken some night with them presence in our rooms – we need to understand that not all dangerous things are big.

All this caused me to think that sin is much like coronavirus. You can’t see the seed of it in the human heart, but it’s there and just waiting to break out. The things that could make us sick or us spiritually don’t usually present themselves as huge or life-shattering decisions. They start small and are maybe not even recognized in the beginning, but once the infection gets into our hearts and minds it begins to multiply – and it can be deadly. Small, seemingly innocent interactions can lead to serious issues!

Psalm 51:10 (ESV) – Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.

PRAYER: Jesus, help us be aware of how insidious Satan and sin can be so we don’t fall into his snare. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Copyright by 2020 by Galen C. Dalrymple.  ><}}}”>

 

DayBreaks for 2/10/20 – The Battleground of the Gods

Matthew 15:19 (ESV) – For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander.

Let there be no doubt, the heart is the battleground of the gods. It is in the heart that the battle rages and will be won or lost. 

In Gods at War, Kyle Idleman talks about a friend of his who is a cardiologist. The doctor was describing arteriograms – injecting dye into a patient’s bloodstream and then watching on an X-ray as the dye goes through the patient’s heart. The purpose is to look for blockages that could lead to a heart attack. The doctor could then treat the blockages.

But the catch is this: heart problems can go undetected and undiagnosed for years. Why? Because no arteriogram is done to test the heart’s circulation because the symptoms don’t seem relevant. Someone may not be able to sleep, have back pain, loss of appetite, anxiety, mild shortness of breath or other issues. The patient will describe the symptoms to the doctor and the doctor treats the symptoms. The patient, after all, is complaining of not being able to sleep or chalks the mild shortness of breath up to normal aging. In reality, the symptom may be caused by a heart issue. If it’s cardiovascular, the patient won’t get better until it is recognized for what it is and treated.

Here’s a spiritual arteriogram for you today. Ask yourself these questions and ponder your responses carefully. They could point to as serious heart issue:

What do you complain about the most: it reveals what really matters to us and whining shows what has power over us.

Where (and for what things) do you make financial sacrifices: where you money goes shows what god is ruling your heart.

What worries you: it could be a person, a job, reputation – anything that has enough power over you to wake you up at night could be a god.

Where is your sanctuary: when you’re really hurting, what do you turn to – is it alcohol, drugs, promiscuity, the great outdoors? The higher ground we seek at such times reveals the values that may be our gods.

What infuriates you: we all have hot buttons that cause us to “lose it”. Those things reveal what is really important to us. It could be winning, lack of comfort or respect, something that embarrasses you. Those things tend to indicate that the oldest idol of all has hold of me – the god of “me”.

What are your dreams: what we long for and dream of is as revealing as the things we fear. Where does your mind go when you choose to let it go freestyle? Aspirations are good – but the question is why do you aspire to those things. Is it so you can give God more glory or have glory, fame and maybe fortune for yourself?

PRAYER: Lord, don’t let us deceive ourselves as we take this spiritual arteriogram! May your Spirit reveal to us what You see in our hearts. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Copyright by 2020 by Galen C. Dalrymple.  ><}}}”>

 

DayBreaks for 11/19/19 – The National Rush to Therapy

From the DayBreaks archive, November 2009:

Ft. Hood, Texas.  Sadly, that name is now in the archives along with Columbine, Lockerbie, Auschwitz (though this was a much larger scale) and others.  It is a name that will “live in infamy” to borrow a phrase from Franklin D. Roosevelt.  On a beautiful fall day, blood was spilled mixing its color with the leaves.  Thirteen died (as of this writing) and many more were wounded.  It was a tragedy that should not have happened – just as Cain should not have slain Abel, David should not have had Uriah killed, and Saul should not have killed Stephen.  Yet human tragedy seems to be the legacy of the human race.

On November 9, 2009, David Brooks, writing in the New York Times in an article titled “A Rush to Therapy”, analyzed the events and news coverage in the aftermath of Ft. Hood.  I have no interest in sitting in judgment on Maj. Hasan – I am more than willing to leave the judging to God as He alone is qualified to sit in judgment.  I don’t have that right, but He does.  What was interesting about this article was Brooks’ focus on how people have tried to explain away the man’s behavior.  He was stressed out from hearing about others stresses (secondary stress syndrome – we even have a name for it).  As a pastor, I can understand that – I’ve been there before and most assuredly will be again.  Others suggested that he acted out of a fear of going to Afghanistan into a war zone (then why did he create one of his own?)  Others said it was “pre-traumatic stress syndrome” – anticipation of the events of the foreseeable future that cause him to snap like a dry twig (yet couldn’t we blame everything on such a “syndrome” if we want to?) 

I want to be fair and honest about this, so I now tread carefully.  I don’t know what was the “straw that broke the camel’s back,” but it seems to me that all the efforts to explain it away, to reassure us as to why it happened, have missed a very crucial point: the existence of evil.  Major Hasan was not different from anyone you meet on the street.  Everyone has struggles and they’re happy to tell you about them if you’ll stop long enough to listen.  Everyone has things they dread in the future (aging, loss of income, health issues, fear of death or abandonment, fear of conflict.)  But not everyone responds as Major Hasan did.  He chose to act evilly.  Why did he kill and wound so many?  Because of evil in the heart.  So it has always been – and so it will always be until we let God create new hearts within us. 

On the same day as Brooks’ article came out, it was announced that the Beltway Sniper (John Allen Mohammad) would not receive clemency and would be executed that same evening at 9:00 p.m..  Something inside of me “cheered” at that news.  After all, I wanted to see “justice” done to this man who held much of the eastern seaboard hostage to a murderous terror spree some years back.  What beat in his heart?  Evil.  I recall people trying to excuse his behavior, too.  I have no doubt that he suffered disappointments, possibly abuse.  Yet that didn’t make him a murderer.  It was his choice about how to respond to those things that made him a murderer.  He could have chosen to go another way – to become a counselor or social worker who helps people who have experienced the things he did, but that wasn’t what he chose.  He chose to act evilly.

But then God puts a check in my heart.  “How have you responded to evil, Galen?”  Well, Lord, there have certainly been times when I talked about someone who hurt me behind their back.  I’ve thought thoughts about them that should never be thought – let alone spoken.  I may have intentionally wronged someone or acted in an evil manner.  But those, too, were choices.  And where do they come from?  From the same heart that drove Hasan or the Beltway Sniper to do what they did.  Perhaps my actions weren’t as evil in the eyes of society, but they are still evil. 

Enough of the evil.  Enough of denying its existence in the hearts of others – and in our own hearts.  Let us all pray that God creates that new heart within us that David pled for when he recognized his own need: Create in me a clean heart, O God, and take not Thy Holy Spirit from me.  Restore unto me the joy of Thy salvation and renew a right spirit within me.  (Ps. 51:10) 

PRAYER: Create in us clean hearts, Father and a spirit that is fashioned after Your Own.  In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Copyright by 2019 by Galen C. Dalrymple.  ><}}}”>

DayBreaks for 10/15/19 – The Longest Distance in the Universe

From the DayBreaks archive, October 2009:

If you’ve ever driven across the United States, you know how far it is!  And America is a relatively small land mass compared to Asia or the length of Africa.  Even flying overseas to other countries can be a long, long haul!  Traveling takes time.

I suppose that the longest distance that one could travel and remain on earth would either be around the equator, or the north/south meridian that would take one around the globe in a north to south direction.  I hate to think how long such a trip would take.

Some time ago, I read a statement that the longest distance in the world is the 18 inches between the human mind and the human heart.  What did they mean?  They meant that it’s easy to accept something with the mind and intellect, but very hard to really accept it and believe it with the heart.  For example, the Word tells us that we are no longer his enemies, nor even his servants, but His children.  But does it always feel like it to you?  After you’ve been doing things that you know you shouldn’t have been doing it is hard to believe that he welcomes us.  His promise from 1 John 1:9-10 to forgive us if we confess our sins is easy enough to memorize and tuck away in the gray matter of our brains, but it’s not as easy to really believe we’re forgiven and then to live like it.  And while we nod our heads in the affirmative when he tells us that greater is the One that is in us than the one that is in the world, and that we have His power at our disposal – it is much more difficult to act as if it is true because though we have head knowledge, our heart acceptance is woefully lacking. 

What difference does all this make?  We are hampered by the fact that what we know hasn’t traveled the 18 inches to our hearts.  We know we are to love Him, and that if we do love him, it will mean that we will obey Him – we don’t ever seem to really get to around to obeying him as if we love him. 

I wish there was a silver bullet that would enable all that head knowledge to make the journey to our hearts so we could live it out.  I don’t know of such a silver bullet, other than taking what He says on faith – and then to start to live like we believe it.  That means we will take more risks and step out more on faith than we have in the past.  It means we will take on challenges that are too big for us – and which we know are too big for us – and then watch Him make it happen through His own power so He gets the glory – not us. 

How much of what He has said and promised to you has made that longest journey in the world to your heart?

PRAYER: We are so grateful for your patience with us – and we ask that you help us to live what we know intellectually and to live lives of faith, not hesitation!  In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Copyright by 2019 by Galen C. Dalrymple.  ><}}}”>

DayBreaks for 7/10/19 – Awake During Open Heart Surgery

DayBreaks for 07/10/19: Awake During Open Heart Surgery

From the DayBreaks archives, July 2009:

How much pain can one person carry?  I honestly don’t know the answer to that question.  I know that I’ve had very little pain in my life compared to millions and probably billions of other humans who have lived on this blue marble.  I can hardly imagine anyone, though, who perhaps bore so much pain as the ancient hero, Job.  His suffering was emotional, financial, mental, physical and spiritual.  I don’t know anyone else who has lost as much as Job did (especially his children!)  The pain of losing just one child would be unbearable…but try to imagine losing all 10 at once.  And for a time, Job, we are told, said and did nothing amiss.  Then, he finally seems to break.  But it wasn’t the loss of the flocks, herds, buildings.  It had nothing to do with his financial empire.  He didn’t even rail against God when his children died.  I’m sure that wasn’t because he didn’t love them – he surely cared a great deal about them.  No, Job seemed to “lose” it when he felt God has slipped away and left him alone.  It was then that Job began to struggle.  It was then that Job came face to face with a darker side of his nature than he’d probably realized existed. 

In The Gospel According to Job, Mike Mason wrote: “Being a believer in God necessarily implies grappling with the dark side of one’s nature.  Many of us, however, seem to be so afraid of our dark side that far from dealing with it realistically, we repress and deny it.  If we do so chronically, we need to ask ourselves whether we really believe in the healing power of Christ’s forgiveness and in His victory over our evil natures.  Perhaps we have never frankly come to grips with the fact that we ourselves are evil.  If we have not, then we are ill prepared for those times when believing in god is like being away during open heart surgery. For our Creator is not yet finished with us; He is still creating us, still making us, just as He has been all along from the beginning of the universe.   But for the short span of our life here on earth we have the strange privilege of actually being wide awake as He continues to fashion us, to watch wide-eyed as His very own fingers work within our hearts…the only anesthetic is trust…trust is not a passive, soporific thing.  When there is stabbing pain, trust cries out.  It is only mistrust, fear and suspicion that keep silent.”

Your life has had some level of pain.  I am frequently asked “Why?  Why is there so much pain involved with being a Christian?  You’d think that a loving God would do everything possible to spare His children pain!”  There is a certain rationale to that argument.  But I think it misses the point that Mike Mason makes: God is doing open heart surgery on us – our hearts MUST be changed if we are to live forever.  If they are not changed, we will die of our fatal condition.  No one does open heart surgery just for practice or for the fun of it.  It is only done when it is necessary to save or extend a life.  We are awake during the process.  

If God doesn’t do His surgery on our heart, we will most certainly die.  There will be pain.  But would any father not allow the pain in order to spare the life of the child?  Certainly, a good father would agree to have the child operated on so that the child could live.  The pain is part of the process of healing and being made well. 

What makes the surgery on our hearts bearable at all?  Trust.  Trust that God is reliable and doing what is not only good for us, but necessary for us if we are to live with Him in His home.  Belief that God knows precisely what is needed in your heart and mine – and that He will complete the work that is necessary.

PRAYER: Though this surgery is painful, Lord, we open our hearts to You and invite you to do what is necessary to make us fit to be Your children and to live in Your Presence throughout all eternity.  In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Copyright by 2019 by Galen C. Dalrymple.  ><}}}”>

DayBreaks for 6/28/19 – The Pure in Heart

DayBreaks for 06/28/19: The Pure in Heart

From the DayBreaks archives, June 2009:

Matthew 5:8: Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

Have you ever wanted to see God? Have your ever thought that if you could just see Him for a moment that it would be easier to believe and obey? It might be for a short while, but probably not in the long run. There were many who saw and heard him but didn’t believe. But seeing isn’t believing.

In the sermon on the mount, Jesus utters the words found in Matthew 5:8. What is the connection between being pure in heart and seeing God? What is the message Jesus wants us to understand?

Several thoughts come to mind:

FIRST: I’m glad that Jesus said “pure in heart” and didn’t insist it was only those who were pure in deed that would see God. In my heart I want to do what is right, in my flesh I find it harder to live out. While what is in our hearts should find expression in the outcome of our actions, there is sometimes a disconnect. God judges the heart (1 Sam. 16:7).

SECOND: A French writer, Francois Mauriac, had an interesting insight. He concluded that self-discipline, repression of desires and logical and rational arguments are not sufficient weapons to use in fighting our impulses to sin. And that has been my experience, too. No matter how hard I try to discipline myself, I yield to temptation. Mauriac ultimately concluded that there was only one good reason to be pure, and that is what Jesus was saying in this verse. As Mauriac put it, “Impurity separates us from God. The spiritual life obeys laws as verifiable as those of the physical world…Purity is the condition for a higher love – for a possession superior to all possessions: that of God. Yes, that is what is at stake, and nothing else.”

This was the meaning of the parable of the pearl of great price: there is nothing (no earthly pleasure or heavenly delight) that can compare to possessing God Himself and having Him as your own. The desire to “have” God and to be His, to see His face, is the only motivation that can overcome the impurity of our hearts and make us pure enough to be able to see His face.

Why is it that the pure in heart can see God? Because it is simply the condition to be in His presence.  The point is clear: do you want to see God? Be pure in heart…singularly devoted to Him, seeking Him and His way and will above all other ways and wills…even your own!

Prayer: Cleanse our hearts and make them fully devoted to You!  In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Copyright by 2019 by Galen C. Dalrymple.  ><}}}”>