Teach me your way,
O Lord, that I may walk in your truth;
give me an undivided heart to revere your
name.
Psalm
86:11
I was recently reminded of the necessity for an undivided
heart. Last weekend, while in slow traffic on the Interstate, I saw a pickup truck
with a variety of messages that provided an example of a divided heart. The
truck had both a Christian fish emblem and a bumper sticker critical of the
President, spelling the word “moron” with his campaign logo replacing each “o.”
When we divide our heart in an attempt to keep one foot in Christian values and the other espousing
worldly beliefs we run headlong into Jesus’ teaching that says we cannot serve
two masters (Matthew 6:24). And with such a divided heart, instead of revering
God’s name, we instead make a mockery of it.
When we are so immersed in our culture, it becomes hard
to hear the whisper of the Spirit calling us to live lives that become the
gospel. I believe that without silence and solitude, it is not possible to have
an undivided, focused heart.
Abba Moses, a Desert Father, said, ‘One who avoids others
is like a ripe grape. One who stays in company is like a sour grape.’ Without
regular times of silence and solitude, where we can really listen to God, we
end up parroting the voices of the company we keep, the frequently contentious
and distracting voices of our culture. And if that is all we hear, we may not
even be aware of how sour we’ve become.
A friend once gave up listening to the radio for Lent.
Because he spends much of the day in the car, giving up radio meant a lot of
quiet. After Lent, he commented that a radio show he used to enjoy had gotten
more harsh and critical. I think that what happened was that the silence made
my friend’s heart more tender. The radio show had not changed, but my friend
had. Silence has a way of healing the divided heart.
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