Single and Happy: Finding Your Love Life Every Day

How Is Your Heart?

"May Christ dwell in your hearts through faith, may you be rooted and founded in love"

Ephesians 3:17

How is it?

Happy? Broken? Empty? Betrayed? Cold? Hard as stone? Soft as mamon (Filipino sponge cake)?

Every time we look into our heart, we see our center, the essence of who we are and all the things we value.

In our heart we realize our desire, passion and drive. We know how we are if we know how our heart is.

How about the persons beside you, how are their hearts?

We cannot see the entirety of it, but we can see a part of it, in the way they act and speak. "For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of." (Luke 6:45) Only when we enter into one's heart that we can fully appreciate a person.

Which is why a song like Exchange of Hearts was composed, saying that,

"Girl you'd understand if your heart was mine, if we had an exchange of heart ... then you'd know how I fell apart, you'd feel the pain when the memories start".

It's like saying, if we had an exchange of heart, you will understand who you are in my life, and how much I love you.

How about the heart of Jesus? How is it?

In John 19:34 it says, "One of the soldiers, however, pierced his side with a lance and immediately there came out blood and water"

That is the heart of Jesus: betrayed, broken and pierced. But this is also the heart of Jesus: free, whole and a stream of life and love.

Let us try to have an exchange of heart with Jesus and deepen on it.

Betrayed and Free.

Have you been betrayed by your friend? Or at least you felt betrayed? How does it feel?

It hurts, right? It hurts because you care for that person so much, yet they repay you with betrayal, and worst, they lifted you up so high before they brought you down.

Thanks be to God I haven't experienced so much betrayal in my life, but there is one girl I met who was betrayed so much. She trusted a friend, yet that person stole millions of pesos from her. It caused her a lot of depression and anxiety, to the point of having a cancer. She survived and is cancer-free now.

Jesus was betrayed, by Judas, and by us.

Why did it have to be a friend who chose to betray the Lord? Why did he use a kiss to show them? That's not what a kiss is for!

Only a friend can betray a friend, a stranger has nothing to gain. Only a friend who comes close enough, can ever cause so much pain. ("Why" by Michal Card)

Betrayed heart.

Free heart.

Jesus, way ahead, knows that Judas will betray Him, He knew what will happen to him, He knew how it will happen, yet He chose to stay.

"No one takes away my life from me, I lay it down on my own." (John 10:18)

This is the heart of Jesus, free to choose love and free to do the will of God. Betrayed and free.

Broken and whole

Have you been broken-hearted? I was. At some degree, we all were. How does it feel?

I know how it feels, it feels like every word in the lyrics of a broken-hearted song speaking to your heart.

There's a song called Leave your Lover by Sam Smith, with lyrics that hurt me when I was in my broken-hearted stage, looking outside my window, while raining,

"you'll never know the endless nights, the rhyming of the rain or how it feels to fall behind and watch you call his name".

Ouuuuch! Really hurts!

But, how about us when we break someone's heart?

We all, in some sense, are heartbreakers too. We broke so many hearts in an intentional and unintentional way, especially the heart of Jesus.

Jesus was broken – He chose us, but we chose ourselves, like a rose, trampled on the ground. He carried his cross, took the fall and thought of us, above all.

Yes, it is broken by us, yet it is still whole.

His heart is whole because it's full of you, me, and all of us.

Amidst brokenness, He is filled with love.

"Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing." (Luke 23:34)

Pierced and a stream of life and love

Have you been pierced? At least figuratively?

For me, these are the times when someone crushed my ego, made me angry, or pissed me off. When I am pierced, I pierce back, I give death. It is when I say bad words and offend someone. It is when I cut relationship and create division.

But Jesus did exactly the opposite.

When Jesus was pierced, instead of piercing back, immediately He poured out His life and love for us, through his blood and water.

Water represents life.

He gave us new life through the baptism of water.

"Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again ... Born of water and Spirit" (John 3:3,6)

We are born again through Him. He gives new life. We are piercing Him, yet He is giving us renewal.

Blood represents love.

"For God so love the world that He gave His only begotten one and only Son that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life." (John 3:16)

A new covenant was established through Jesus' blood. A new relationship with God through Christ. When He poured out His blood, He built a new bridge that we can walk on, the way to God the Father.

If we are hundred steps away from God, Jesus is pouring out His blood and taking that ninety-nine steps to us, asking us to take that one step back to Him, by receiving His blood.

Friend, this is the heart of Jesus, this is indeed the sacred Heart of Jesus.

"May Christ dwell in your hearts through faith, may you be rooted and founded in love." (Eph 3:17)

Contemplate and reflect the heart of Jesus.

"May you be able to understand with all the believers the width and length and height and depth in a word." (Eph 3:18)

How is your heart?

If we are called to be Christ, then we are called to have the heart of Christ, living in us – betrayed yet free, broken yet whole, pierced yet a stream of life and love.

Friend, continue "to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God." (Eph 3:19)