Heart Month

February is 'Heart Month" in Canada, and a good time to look at just how the writers of the Bible understood the word 'heart'.. For sure, they weren't thinking about heart attacks as the Heart and Stroke Foundation does today.

“I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘Know the Lord’, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord” (Jeremiah 31:33-34)

“You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, to be known and read by all; and you show that you are a letter of Christ, prepared by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.”

(2 Corinthians: 3: 2-3)

The human heart has been written about for hundreds of years by poets and sages as the seat of where human emotion resides. Once a year, in the month of February we have not only a day, Valentine’s Day, when we are surrounded both by hearts and messages of love but also the whole month has been designated Heart Month by the Heart & Stroke Foundation.

If we look back into the writings ascribed to Jeremiah as well as those of the apostle Paul, we find that the heart has been given a special role there too. The heart is seen by both of these authors as the place where the divine has written, has made itself known. Because of this we shall, according to Jeremiah, know the divine intimately without needing to be taught.

But the questions are: “Do we trust what the divine has written on our hearts? Are we even aware of it? Do we acknowledge where it comes from?”, and most importantly, “What do we do with it?”

Besides this Paul seems to be saying, unlike Jeremiah, that not only has God written on our hearts, but that that letter is to be read and known by all. All of a sudden this becomes not something that 'God' is doing and we simply receive, but rather something that we are right in the midst of. It is up to us to be sure that what is written on our hearts by 'God' is known and read by all – not just those who agree with us, not just those who we feel comfortable with, not even just those who we know, but ALL. 'God' is not going to make it known, we must do that.

We make it known not only in the way we stand for the just distribution of the world’s resources so that all may have enough, but also in the way we treat those with whom we come into contact with each day, the way we spend our time, our care for creation and the way we spend our resources.

What is written on your heart this February?

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