“Yet even now, says the Lord, return to me with all your heart, with fasting with weeping, and with mourning; rend your hearts and not your clothing. Return to the Lord your God for God is gracious and merciful.”
Are you looking for a way to return to God? Joel writes that we should rend our hearts.
Rend our hearts—what an image—an opening of our very center. A tearing apart of what beats in us with life, risking losing our life for the sake of eternal life.
Rend our hearts—a kind of tearing open what is most secret and fearful inside us. The things we are keeping deep and dark within, the things that scare us about ourselves. Rend those, take them and give them a little tug to open them up for God’s healing mercy.
Rend our hearts—an emotional upheaval maybe, causing us to listen to the deep urgings inside us to find God, not by fearing that God will really know who we are. God hates nothing God has made, there can be no hate of us, only a wish that we would return to God by giving up what does not belong to us, what is jealous, or mean spirited, what does not belong to God the center of our being.
Rend our hearts—give up what is causing us to want to be the major mover and shaker of our soul and give that job back to God. Return our very self to God’s love and protection and quit trying to make everything something we think we can control.
Can you rend your hearts this Lent? Enter deeper and be ready for the love that will take your broken heart and mend it as it returns to God?
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