Stone Hearts
Rebecca Urrutia
December 16, 2009
Filed under Spirituality, Student Life, Top Stories
With every breath you take, the scarlet heart within you pumps red liquid life. It throbs unceasingly, day and night, bringing oxygen to the life found within its secret chambers. Everything seems to be working perfectly until a poison stealthily seeps in. Unexpectedly and unnoticed, it trickles through and slowly begins to sink in to the deepest caverns of your crimson heart. The walls begin to harden steadily and the red life begins to crystallize. Before you know it, your heart has turned into stone—lifeless, trapped and without hope.
Some of us have been going to church since the day we first learned how to walk. And ever since then it has been Sunday school lessons, VBS summer camps, memory verses and worship songs on a weekly basis. We started out with a childlike faith and a sincere hunger for God’s word—but where are we now? Over time, it seems like phrases have become cliché, words have lost their meaning, and prayers have simply become a routine. Slowly but surely, our hearts have turned to stone—without breath, without life, without passion.
When did the crucifixion stop moving us to tears? When did we turn our faces to the Holy Spirit’s conviction of sin in our lives? Our hearts have become so incredibly calloused and our ears have grown deaf to the sound of God’s voice. Like the song “Everything” by Lifehouse says, “How can I stand here with you and not be moved by you?”
Yes, maybe we are reading our Bibles and doing our devotions everyday…but we lack passion and love. These things have simply become chores on our “Christian-to-do list,” and sometimes they seem more like duties than privileges.
CCA’s Youth Pastor Topher Harrison reminded me of Jesus and the Pharisees, when he boldly called them “white-washed tombs.” Pastor Topher said, “We have all these rituals to keep us clean on the outside, and although we know the Word, we are still dirty. We need to ask God to restore to us the joy of our salvation!”
May God have mercy on us! Like God said to the prophet Ezekiel, “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you. . .” Let that be our fervent prayer! We need to sincerely cry out to God, fall on our knees before Him and ask Him to show us if we have hardened hearts! We need to beg Him to change us and give us hearts of flesh and set us free from our lifestyles that are based on routine and performance. If we genuinely desire to break free, He will be faithful to hear our cry and remove these chains from our stone hearts.