But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD:I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.--From the 31st chapter of Jeremiah
I'm mucking around with the idea of the heart and heartbreak, what it means to have our hearts break. The image is usually one we associate with romantic love--getting our hearts broken with a painful break up. Who hasn't known that pain? And I think of the horrific story of Trayvon Martin, one of far too many children gunned down in the violence that comes from humanity's brokenness. Reading the story of the murder of Trayvon Martin is, at least for me, heartbreak. Heartbreak over the loss of a child, heartbreak over the racism that still permeates our culture, heartbreak over a system that would look the other way, heartbreak that is filled with both sorrow and anger (is there really any breaking of our hearts that doesn't have both?).
One of my peers told me the other of an old teaching that said God breaks open our hearts so that God's covenant can be poured into them. I love this image. To have God's love, so heavy and so full, etched onto us, flowing into our hearts--it is almost too much to bear.
Mary Oliver's poem Lead is also running around in my head. This is the last part of it:
I tell you this
to break your heart,
by which I mean only
that it break open and never close again
to the rest of the world.
In this season of heart-break, may we be aware of the Love that is so heavy it is almost too much to bear, Love that breaks us and Love that breaks for us.
