As water reflects the face, so one's life reflects the heart. - Proverbs 27:19

Today's Scripture Reading (November 24, 2022): Proverbs 27

Fantasy author Leigh Bardugo in "Six of Crows" writes that "The heart is an arrow. It demands aim to land true." Leigh is right, but it might be better said that "The heart is an arrow, but it hits the target at which our life is aimed." The heart just isn't very good at trick shots. Whatever the heart is set toward, its arrows will be sent there. It doesn't matter what we say is important to us because the heart knows the difference between our words and actions, and it always sends its arrows in the direction of our actions and not towards our words.

Proverbs says that just as water reflects the face of the one bending over it, the heart will be mirrored by our actions. If you want to know where someone's heart is, watch their life's actions. Actions will only reflect something other than the heart's desire with great effort, and that effort is unsustainable. We live in the direction of our hearts, and those around us will know what our heart finds important by how we live. A racist heart will always result in racist actions. A loving heart will be revealed in how we act toward those around us and whether we are willing to love even those who refuse to love us.

It is nice to think that we can change our behavior by deciding to that change with our mind, but real change is much deeper. It involves the heart or wherever we believe the core of our being resides. As a result, behavioral change always requires a changed heart.

So Ezekiel, writing to the exiles in Babylon after the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 B.C.E., speaks these words of God.

"'For I will take you out of the nations; I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. 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 and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. Then you will live in the land I gave your ancestors; you will be my people, and I will be your God (Ezekiel 36:24-28).

Effecting real change means we need to be willing to change our hearts. We must be willing to let God remove our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh that will be responsive to the things of God. Only then will we be the people that God created us to be, and only then will the arrows of our hearts hit the target at which God wants our lives to be aimed.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Proverbs 28