It is hard to keep a soft heart in harsh environments

Epiphanies are gratuities of God laid out in the splendour of the average day. Yet, they’re remarkable. When one’s heart has become hard, black even, tinged with darkness for the darkness one has been infused in, such a heart has no sense for life, and only God can breathe hope through light that shines in upon that darkness.

Keeping one’s heart soft in harsh environments—which are common to life on this earth—is hard work. How do we actually do it? 

Well, we have to anticipate that hurts will come. People will let us down most comprehensively, and of those who do that, who we trust most, (and we all have such capacity) will be the cause of a blackening if we’re not careful. Hurt hearts become hard in an instant, yet we often do not realise our growing poverty of spirit until others are left saying, “Wow, there’s a real lack of gratitude in that one.”

The way through this is to face it. Having seen the pitch, and having seen the heart in the glory of its truth, the core without life or hope, ripe and ready with complaint, not needing a second invitation to anger, equipped with ‘mood’, suddenly there is no false humility, and there in the facing is an honest assessment that allows the light to shine through.

Keeping a soft heart in a harsh environment is only as easy as it is to see our own capacity for judgement, criticism and condemnation—yet the God of life, who is the only real and fair Judge, judged us as innocents by the blood and broken body of a sinless Lamb.

How dare we be hard of heart? In the moment we see our hardness of heart a revelation strikes us that feels condemning but isn’t. As God shines the light of truth into our hearts, the darkness is seen, but soon the light prevails.

Then we say, “Look at what God has done! I’m a man (or woman) with unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, but it’s my state of broken-heartedness that interests You most, as far as I’m personally concerned, Lord.”

The real touch of freedom beckons at a personally held truth—“MY lips need singing with that hot coal from the seraphim.”

The hard heart is a state of spiritual blindness where everyone but the person with the hard heart can see—something is wrong and needs fixing, but this thing can only be fixed when God shows the person themselves.

How good is it when we’re shown!

To keep our hearts soft in this harsh world is a hard thing to accomplish. A hurt heart will harden in a flash. We must be honest about our hearts, see our spiritual poverty, and seek our healing with all the will we possess when we’re hurt. Our spiritual lives depend on it.