The Book of My Heart

"God rewrote the text of my life when I opened the book of my heart to his eyes." Psalm 18:24 The Message

I do not typically read the The Message Bible but a friend posted this and it touched my heart. It struck me as spiritual poetry. Then I meditated on it more.

Here is how it is worded in the NIV “The LORD has rewarded me according to my righteousness, according to the cleanness of my hands in his sight.”

God does, in fact, rewrite the text of our lives when we open the book of our hearts to his eyes! He forgives our sins, washes us clean and pure and looks at us without seeing the old spots and blemishes of sin. He separates us from our sin…therefore; it is accurate to say he rewrites the text of our lives when He erases all we have been and creates the new us as He sees us! That alone should be enough to give praise and thanks for. Notice it required action on our part for Him to do His part. We must first open the book of our hearts to His eyes.

“..the book of my heart..” if that’s not poetry I do not know what is! Since God sees the heart and knows the soul of every one of us, He knows what He will find in the book of our hearts but it is the action of opening our hearts and inviting His eyes that we must do. He doesn’t need us to read us….He wants us to want Him to read us.

Years after one of my daughters was grown I discovered a diary she kept as a girl. It was filled with the flighty thoughts and angst of a pubescent girl child. It was also filled with an alarming amount of anger and hostility toward me. It was a precursor to the emotional issues we would later face in her life. Scripture tells us that out of the mouth the abundance of the heart speaks. It also speaks through the written word hidden in a book of the heart. It would be a couple of years after these words were written that we would discover the depths of her distress and despair. I was not aware at the time of the writings that she felt the way she did. She kept it hidden from my sight in person but it filled pages of this book. Insight to her feelings and fears may have presented an opportunity to address the problems long before they became so serious. But, her book was hidden just like the problems.

When I discovered the diary years ago and read what my daughter had written I was filled with a mixture of emotions. Mostly, I was so sad that I did not know of her needs and was not able to seek help for her. I felt that I had failed her by my lack of knowledge of her heart. She was at an age when I could have sought help for her without her cooperation; later when she was older, our efforts were handicapped by her refusal of medication and help.

God does know our hearts and the pain we have expressed in them. Yet, He will not force Himself on us. He wants us to lay the books of our hearts out open in front of Him, inviting Him to read. Unlike my situation with my daughter, God can change the text of our lives and rewrite all the pain and sin away. Imagine His sadness to know His children hide away the books of their hearts, hanging on to all the misery and heartache needlessly! I am so very thankful He desires to read me, to know me, to forgive me, to erase all the wrong and ugliness from me and then to rewrite the text of my life to be acceptable in His sight!

"God rewrote the text of my life when I opened the book of my heart to his eyes."

“The LORD has rewarded me according to my righteousness, according to the cleanness of my hands in his sight.”

We must first open the book of our hearts to His eyes…….pass it on!