Interpreter of the Heart

Daily Reflection: Psalm 27:8 - 12/12/2023

My heart says of you, “Seek his face!” Your face, Lord, I will seek. — Psalm 27:8

Our hearts cannot help but long for home. The problem is what happens as those longings work their way through our sinful desires and are expressed as actions. What began as a yearning for God gets animated as desire for some other substitute pleasure. This is why many people start a journey for meaning or transcendence, but end up looking in the relationship, job, sexual pleasure, drugs, or bank account departments.

Wasn’t this the Prodigal’s story? What he wanted was close all along, but he didn’t understand how to interpret those longings. So he pursued what he thought he wanted deep into a far country. It wasn’t until he was abandoned in a pig-sty of a situation that he was able to discern what he truly desired… “I will go to my Father’s house…” (Luke 15:18).

St. Augustine hit the nail on the head when he wrote, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”

This is the opportunity of life under God as Jesus’ disciple. In that relationship, we can truly listen to the cry of our hearts with the Spirit as its interpreter and begin moving towards our heart’s true home.

Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. — Psalm 139:23-24

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