“Above all else, guard your heart,” says the proverb, “for it is the wellspring of life” (Proverbs 4.23).
"In any case, the heart, like a garden, needs protection and cultivation if it is to flourish and break through the forces that warp and distort its impulses."
What does it mean to "keep the heart"? It means to keep your heart pure and polished. How? through cutting through the ego, pride, misperceptions and distortions that cover our hearts.
How can we purify our hearts and delve into the intrinsically good and pure heart that mirrors the heart of the Creator, our heavenly Father?
The Heart of God
Dr. Martin Luther King said, “At the heart of reality, there is a Heart.”
Behind the human heart, of course, is the divine heavenly Heart.
Behind the human heart, of course, is the divine heavenly Heart.
God’s Heart is the wellspring of His love, the core of His being. This heart impels Him to live for the sake of His children and creation. What may not be known about God's awesome might and majesty is a fierce concern, intense sensitivity, and incomparable tenderness. God is the king of love.
“Can God enjoy His life without love?” asks Reverend Moon. “No. However omniscient or omnipotent He may be, by Himself alone, He cannot enjoy happiness . . . You say you are happy because you have your parents, your husband or wife, your sweetheart. You say to someone, ‘I am happy because I have you with me . . .’ If that is true with human beings, the same applies to God.”
Jesus addressed his Lord and Creator as “Abba”—Papa (Mark 14.36).
More than the most devoted of earthly parents, the Heavenly Father is so passionately concerned with every single one of His children, that no one’s gladness or distress escapes His notice.
“Not one [sparrow] is forgotten before God,” we are assured, and surely each person is “worth more than many sparrows” (Luke 12.6-7).
“Not one [sparrow] is forgotten before God,” we are assured, and surely each person is “worth more than many sparrows” (Luke 12.6-7).
God's heart works in relation to a partner and it does not stand to be apart or enjoy isolation. Who can stand as God's true object partner in relation to His heart?
Philosopher Abraham Heschel speaks of a Lord passionately and personally involved with His people. The Bible has the Creator as affected by humanity as a man is by his wife (Hosea and Jeremiah 3.20).
Philosopher Abraham Heschel speaks of a Lord passionately and personally involved with His people. The Bible has the Creator as affected by humanity as a man is by his wife (Hosea and Jeremiah 3.20).
Indeed, this is a defining characteristic of God’s Heart—no one is outside it. Even those who disobey Him, reject Him or even seek to destroy everything He holds dear are not excluded. His wrath and judgment are ultimately for the purpose of reconciliation, of being together with His children.
Thus there is Jesus’ saying to “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,” in imitation of the Creator's characteristics (Matthew 5.44). As Reverend Moon has said, no matter what state human beings are in, “God cannot but love man. You can be so confident as to say, without you, God cannot be happy.”
The impulse to seek joy through loving is too strong for any permanent rejection or estrangement between the Father and any of His children.
God's Heart has three aspects; One is joy, the spirit in which He created the universe. This is reflected in the infinite varieties of the beauties that make up the creation. During the creation process, the divine imagination was animated with gladness.
“It was good,” He said of His creation (Genesis 1.10). He was especially joyful in anticipation of sharing His life with responsive children and having them delight in the creation He had made. When human parents happily prepare a nursery and then tearfully welcome a new child into the world, they taste something of God’s heart of joy at the creation.
The Heart of God is the ultimate counterpart to the human heart, and deeper and wider than our own and overflowing with the purest, most profound love. Only His heart so fully, in the words of Blaise Pascal, “fills the soul and heart which He possesses" ... it alone has the capacity to completely stimulate every part of us.
Those privileged to have tasted of its fullness have described its intoxicating rapture.
“Once the heart of God dwells within you, no matter how lonely you may be you will be filled and the universe will be filled,” states Reverend Moon. “Such a person is infinitely joyful, lacking nothing.”
“Ah, my Lord God,” wrote Thomas à Kempis, in, “most faithful lover, when Thou comes into my heart, all that is within me rejoices!”
This is the ultimate happiness and the essence of Heaven. It has been called paradise, nirvana, bliss. Whatever it is called, it is ineffably good and satisfying— an oasis in the desert to the thirsting human heart.
This is why the distance from Him that has been the human condition throughout the ages leaves such an ache and restlessness.
As the psalmist expressed it: “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God? My tears have been my food day and night” (42.1-3). Conversely, when Adam sinned, God searched for him in the Garden, calling, “Where are you?”(Genesis 3.9). This can be views as God's pure Heart could no longer see Adam's impure heart after the fall occurred.
The fall left Heavenly Father and the earthly children in need of fulfillment having lost their "love partner" of one another. God's heart has experienced much displeasure. Who can look at God's situation as wonderful throughout history when one peers through the eyes of God looking upon His lost children disconnected from His heart? "The agonies of the world that burden all but the most callous of souls are."
Joy over the Creation Hope and Commitment to Restore the Lost Ideal Impulse to Love Sorrow Over Human Suffering
This is an important aspect of the divine heart: sorrow.
God is likened to a human parent that has to endure witnessing their children suffering through a reckless act or worse, as victims of a crime. God's heart breaks whenever he sees the torment and misery of the world;the senselessness of war, the wretchedness of hunger and poverty, the harshness of disease, the agonies of families torn apart and the devastation of spiritual emptiness.
“If one part suffers, every part suffers with it,” said St. Paul of the body of believers (1 Corinthians 12.26); how could the Head of the body not suffer? He agonizes with His loved ones as any of His children do with theirs.
“In all their distress, he too was distressed” (Isaiah 63.9), say the Hebrew scriptures of His relationship with His people; He “could bear Israel’s misery no longer” (Judges 10.16). He was even agonized as a mother in labor: “Now, like a woman in childbirth, I cry out, I gasp and pant” (Isaiah 42.14). Muhammad likewise felt God’s misery, saying in a Hadith, “I see what you do not see and I hear what you do not hear; heaven has groaned, and heaven has a right to groan.”
God is likened to a human parent that has to endure witnessing their children suffering through a reckless act or worse, as victims of a crime. God's heart breaks whenever he sees the torment and misery of the world;the senselessness of war, the wretchedness of hunger and poverty, the harshness of disease, the agonies of families torn apart and the devastation of spiritual emptiness.
“If one part suffers, every part suffers with it,” said St. Paul of the body of believers (1 Corinthians 12.26); how could the Head of the body not suffer? He agonizes with His loved ones as any of His children do with theirs.
“In all their distress, he too was distressed” (Isaiah 63.9), say the Hebrew scriptures of His relationship with His people; He “could bear Israel’s misery no longer” (Judges 10.16). He was even agonized as a mother in labor: “Now, like a woman in childbirth, I cry out, I gasp and pant” (Isaiah 42.14). Muhammad likewise felt God’s misery, saying in a Hadith, “I see what you do not see and I hear what you do not hear; heaven has groaned, and heaven has a right to groan.”
Not only does God feel the pain of every person, but this is ever amplified by His understanding of what could be, like a dreamer who is far from his ideal, His unrealized vision for the beautiful world He intended. A parent grieves even more painfully over a child’s mistakes and suffering than the child does, because the elder also knows more fully all the potential and hopes and dreams that have been lost.
God had envisioned a Heaven on Earth and higher ideal than the current situation of the world.
God had envisioned a Heaven on Earth and higher ideal than the current situation of the world.
Besides His pain arising from compassion, God’s heart aches for the broken communion with His loved ones. He feels the pangs of joys lost, unable to fully share the lives and the loves of His myriad sons and daughters. This frustrated hope is what Asians call “han,” the basis of what theologian Andrew Sung Park calls God’s “wounded heart”.
Yes, God's heart has been broken at the disobedience and suffering of His children.
Scriptures reveal the pain of the Parent who has given all yet cannot connect with His children enough. His love is largely unrequited. “The more I called Israel, the further they went from me...” (Hosea 11.2). This Hebrew verse captures the poignant lament of a heartbroken Father.
"How often I have longed to gather your children together,” He confesses to a rebellious world, “as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing” (Matthew 23.37).
The parent is willing to give without end for the sake of her child, but joy is incomplete when love is not returned. Indeed, He is described as “grieved” over the wickedness and faithlessness of His children (Genesis 6.5-6).
The parent is willing to give without end for the sake of her child, but joy is incomplete when love is not returned. Indeed, He is described as “grieved” over the wickedness and faithlessness of His children (Genesis 6.5-6).
That poster seemed to speak to me. I realized that God is missing all kinds of children. Day after day, He watches His children killing each other, robbing each other, crumbling down in loneliness and then going to hell. When I thought how I’d run around searching if my own child was missing, I realized I had to testify to my faith with more fervor to help God find His missing children.
God is the fountain of hope. This is the third primary aspect of God’s Heart—there is hope that God's ideal which was lost in the beginning can be restored.
This hope gives power to overcome the sorrow, disappointment, and grief. This force sustains His awesome perseverance, which has been laboring painstakingly and patiently through His representative for the day of the great homecoming.
He fervently seeks among the multitudes of every child who does not know Him. The Bible offers metaphors for the almighty Lord of the universe.
One is the image of a poor woman desperately searching for a lost coin (Luke 15.8-10), as if the omnipotent One forgets all dignity in His urgent efforts to save His children. Another is that of a shepherd, leaving all of his flock to track down the missing one and rejoicing when it is found (Luke 15.4-7).
If a parent's child was taken captive, that parent would sacrifice and offer anything and any amount of ransom if it meant the liberation of their children held in bondage. God does the same with more intensity using His whole heart and effort toward liberating man from the chains of ignorance and the force of selfishness.
God cannot rest until even those who have committed the most heinous of crimes repent and begin to cultivate their own hearts of original goodness which emulates God's great heart.
Maybe the best poignant image of the tender Creator is the one painted by Jesus in his story of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15.11-32). The patriarch's aching heart is revealed for his wayward son's return when he stays waiting at the window hoping for the day he returned. The father forgets everything when he first sights his son walk back to the land and runs forward to greet him. He is beside himself with joy to have his son back, no matter what pain the young man caused. One could say the father is a willing slave to parental love.
Since man is made in God's image, God's heart is essentially the same.
God has fashioned Himself to be vulnerable to His children and to be captive the the same love that captivates them.
“He is the Lord omnipotent, the Lord of all beings, the controller of all,” the Hindu scripture reads, “yet he permits himself to be controlled by those who love him” (Srimad Bhagavatam)—and by love itself.
Because of His unfailing faith in His people and His vision, God can endure the agony of seeing His faithful ones scorned and persecuted and to keep on working until every part of the original plan is realized. This means, God will not cease His work of restoring His children and world until everyone is back into His bosom.
“He will not falter or be discouraged,” the prophet Isaiah declared, “till he establishes justice on earth” (42.4).
With the heart of the Father yet in the shoes of a servant, God perseveres to save His children, driven by His heart of hope. The father who pays for his son’s careless damage to another person’s car, the mother who goes to the principal to ask for one more chance for her daughter, the father who stands with his boy in court and offers his own respectability as a hope for leniency, the mother who apologizes to a child her daughter has shared the sorrow of God over the misbehavior of His children.
All share the same hope: if they pay enough, pray enough, love enough, and try hard enough, eventually their children will respond to their sacrifice and love and will become responsible people in their own right. This is the hope of every parent. God, the Parent of all, is the same.
Photos by: freedigitalphotos.net
“He will not falter or be discouraged,” the prophet Isaiah declared, “till he establishes justice on earth” (42.4).
With the heart of the Father yet in the shoes of a servant, God perseveres to save His children, driven by His heart of hope. The father who pays for his son’s careless damage to another person’s car, the mother who goes to the principal to ask for one more chance for her daughter, the father who stands with his boy in court and offers his own respectability as a hope for leniency, the mother who apologizes to a child her daughter has shared the sorrow of God over the misbehavior of His children.
All share the same hope: if they pay enough, pray enough, love enough, and try hard enough, eventually their children will respond to their sacrifice and love and will become responsible people in their own right. This is the hope of every parent. God, the Parent of all, is the same.
Photos by: freedigitalphotos.net
Return for Tomorrow's Post: How to Grow the Heart
Textbook: Educating For True Love Chapter, Foundation of Character Foundation based on the teachings of Dr. Rev. Sun Myung Moon as more of an understanding of the Heart of God.
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