The [oil] refinery for
petroleum and other products what your heart should do for you. Refinery takes out the bad and utilizes the
good. We tend to think of the heart as the seat of emotion. We speak of “heartthrobs,”
“heartaches,” and “broken hearts.”
But when Jesus said, “Blessed are the pure in heart” (Matthew 5:8), He was
speaking in a different context. To Jesus’ listeners, the heart was the totality of the inner person – the control tower,
the cockpit. The heart was thought of as the seat of the character – the origin
of desires, affections, perceptions, thoughts, reasoning, imagination,
conscience, intentions, purpose, will, and faith.
Thus a proverb admonished,
“Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it spring the issues
of life” (Proverbs 4:23). To the Hebrew mind, the heart is a freeway
clover-leaf where all emotions and prejudices and wisdom converge. It is a
switch house that receives freight cars loaded with moods, dead emotions and
convictions and puts them on the right track.
And just as low-grade oil
or alloyed gasoline would cause you to question the performance of a refinery,
evil acts and impure thoughts cause us to question the condition of our hearts…
The heart is the centre of the spiritual
life. If the fruit of a tree is bad, you don’t try to fix the fruit; you
treat the roots. And if a person’s actions are evil, it’s not enough to change
habits; you have to go deeper. You have to go to the heart of the problem,
which is the problem of the heart…
And Jesus’ statement rings
true: “Blessed are the pure in
heart, for they shall see God.” Note the order of this beatitude: first purify the heart, then you will see
God.
[From The Applause of Heaven by Max Lucado]
THINK BIG.
START SMALL. GO DEEP.
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