Wednesday, December 13, 2006

The Womb of the Heart


“Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life.” (Prov.4:23)

If one wanted to think of this verse as referring to the fist-sized, blood pumping organ in our body (which it does not refer to), then we could also point to another organ from which life actually does issue—the womb. And this comparison is quite reasonable, scripturally speaking, in the light of the Gospel of John, chapter three. Here, Jesus calls the requirement for Heaven a “new birth,” which prompts Nicodemus to question, “How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb, and be born?” (Jno.3:4).

The heart referred to in this verse, like so many others, however, refers to the inner workings of our being (to use a philosophical term) that makes us who we are. In the light of this, I will make this observation: As a mother, I can attest to the fact that as my own four children grew within my physical womb, love for them grew within the womb my heart; and long after their little bodies issued forth from my womb, wave upon wave of love continues to issue from my heart.

I realized recently that as I see my children go through trying times as their own children mature, I find myself concerned about how this affects them even more than what my grandchildren are going through. Don’t misunderstand; I love and pray for my eleven precious grandchildren and my dear little great-grandson, and I am as intimately involved in their lives as I am able to be. But, somehow, the spiritual and emotional umbilical cord that connected my life to the life of my children was never severed when the physical one was.

I am aware that such feelings can become debilitating to both parent and child, so I remind myself that it must always be an invisible, silken cord, with lots of “slack” for individual growth. Nevertheless, it is there; and as I found out when my own mother succumbed to the ravages of Alzheimer’s, when the mind lets go, the heart still holds on.

No comments:

Post a Comment