My mother has a big heart - literally. She has a larger-than-normal heart due to a congenital condition called cardiomyopathy. It means "enlarged heart muscle." Even if it were not for her heart condition, my mom still has a big heart. She is the most giving person that I know - and I know LOTS of people. I reflect on this, particularly on the day of celebrating mothers (of which my mom says it's Mother's Day every day that you get to be a mom). I am doing critical theological reflection on what it means to have a heart for Jesus and a heart like Jesus, something that I have learned from my mom over the last 35 years plus.
Jesus has a big heart, too. Not an enlarged heart muscle caused by a medical condition, but a big heart due to His sacrifical love for us. Jesus is the heart of our faith. He loves unconditionally, goes to the Father on our behalf, and he intercedes for us time and time again. For those of us who have ever peeped into a Bible and read the gospels, then we are least familiar with His New Testament commandment to love one another.
Love one another. Love one another. You have to have the heart for it. It's not enough to preach it, or pretend it. You have to actually do it. It has to be practiced and it requires active participation on your part. It seems to me that it is near impossible to constantly be at odds with people, always finding something wrong with a situation, person, organization, etc., forcing your opinion upon others as "right" while everyone else is "wrong," yet at the same time heralding these words like a banner of your belief. In fact, it's rather hypocritical. What's at heart here? You have to be authentic. People can spot a fake "big put on" person like they can spot a fake Gucci handbag.
If your heart has been broken, emotionally beaten or bruised in any kind of way, God can heal it and help you live beyond that bad experience. But you have to be willing. Don't turn your heart into a clenched, tightened muscle because it will only restrict the "love" that is supposed to flow. In the Old Testament, over in the 36th chapter of the Book of Ezekiel, God says this in verse 26: "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."
My mom is about as authentic as they come. She is a no-nonsense kind of person. She is the same today as she was yesterday and you can count on her to be just as loving, caring and kind-hearted tomorrow. She knows first-hand the responsibility that comes with having a big heart - you have more love to extend to others! Today is a good day to ask God to give you a new heart and a new spirit so that you can receive love and give love. After all, it's really what's at heart!
The week just before Easter, my pet kitty Toby went missing. After a day of not seeing him, I began to worry, especially as the torrential downpour and spinning tornadoes ripped through the Dallas/Ft. Worth area. I looked throughout the neighborhood. No Toby. My husband searched. No Toby. Six days passed. Still no Toby. On the day after Easter, Toby showed up scarred, bruised and limping. It was clear that he had been through the storm, yet he was back. I don't take it lightly that he showed up the day after Easter, like a Resurrected kitty (and I say that gingerly). He had encountered some of life's toughest storms, yet he pawed his way back home.
I don't know what happened to him but it was clear that he had been through a terrible ordeal. His left front paw was being "babied" by him and his left back paw was severely wounded. I suppose if Toby could talk, he would tell me. But I didn't need to verbally hear that something was wrong because the visual was there. It's like when we all go through storms and we come out battered, bruised and beaten up, yet we limp back and tell the story. Many times it doesn't take us telling someone that we've been through a storm, because if the truth be told, those who are closest to us ought to be able to see the visible and emotional scars that we have. Real friends can look at us and tell something is wrong - see it in our face, hear it in our voice. Silent storms can be heard often louder than the boisterous ones that we rush to talk about.
I welcomed Toby in and gave him food and water. I will be honest and say that I was afraid to touch him because I didn't know the severity of his injuries and how he would respond. That didn't mean that I stopped loving him or missed him dearly. I just wanted to be careful. For his sake and mine. Well, that evening as he curled up outside, he must have decided to leave again, because when I went back to look for him, Toby was gone. The minister in me thought about how seasons of life end - friendships, relationships, careers, etc., and that the ones that are meant to be, will be Resurrected, even when we think it is dead and done. Admittedly, I began to think that Toby was dead, that he had been taken up in the storm and not survived it. But he did survive. And when he came back (and left and showed up again), I knew that whatever the reason was that God initially sent him to me, that it had not yet been completely fulfilled. God will always complete his mission no matter how we view the situation.
You see Toby first showed up in my backyard one day, meowing softly with little whiny sounds that reminded me of a baby. I knew that if I fed him, he'd likely stay around - and he did for nearly a year. I wasn't sure why God sent him to me, but I was determined to feed, clothe and provide shelter for Toby. God had placed him in my care..if only for a season.
I took him to the veterinarian and as she examined Toby, she saw that he had been through quite an ordeal. A phrase that one of my long-time friends used to always say, immediately came to mind and seeing especially fitting... literally: "it's been a cat's life on a kitten's journey."
That phrase simply means that you've endured a hard time, a journey meant for someone much older and yet the journey somehow became yours, a journey that takes years to walk, yet you've walked in a hardship of a few months. Well, for Toby, that phrase was literally true. I also learned that in the battle that kitty endured, that maybe it is preparing him for the battle that is ahead.
Kitty was tested and diagnosed with leukemia. I was stunned and cried in the exam room as the veterinarian shared that with me. It doesn't change the way I feel about him. At all. I will still care for him as long as he is entrusted to me. If I allow myself to believe that cats really do have 9 lives, then I believe that kitty will come through this storm, too.
