Country artist Brett Eldridge, writes and sings about a searching heart on his latest offering.

“What in the world, what in the world, are we all doing here? What do we see, what do we see, when we look in the mirror? ‘Cause I’m just lookin’, lookin’ for something true. And I believe that I might find it. Maybe I’ll find it in you. Just show me where the heart is.”

The human condition can’t be ignored, but watching the worst of human nature in 2020 makes one want to look away. Destroying an exterior historical monument won’t change the hearts’ interior.

From a physical perspective, the human heart is miraculous. The late Dr. Paul Brand compares it to other hearts.

“A hummingbird heart weighs a fraction of an ounce and beats eight hundred times a minute; a blue whale’s heart weighs half a ton, beats only ten times per minute, and can be heard two miles away. In contrast to either, the human heart seems dully functional, yet it does its job, beating 100,000 times a day with no time off for rest, to get most of us through seventy years or more.” (Fearfully and Wonderfully)

From a spiritual perspective, the heart demands to be heard, but I’m not talking heartbeats. When I see a friend for the first time in a while, the question “What’s going on?” is thrown my way. Most people dodge it.

One of the things that has been disillusioning as I rub shoulders with some fellow Christians is their refusal to embrace their humanity. “Nelson, what do you mean?” Listen to another late-great, prolific author.

“We work and goof off, we love and dream, we have wonderful times and awful times, are cruelly hurt and hurt others cruelly, get mad and bored and scared stiff and ache with desire, do all such human things as these, and if our faith is not mainly just window dressing or a rabbit’s foot or fire insurance, it is because it grows out of precisely this kind of rich human compost. The God of biblical faith is the God who meets us at those moments in which for better or worse we are being most human, most ourselves, and if we lose touch with those moments, if we don’t stop from time to time to notice what is happening to us and around us and inside us, we run the tragic risk of losing touch with God too.” (Frederick Buechner, Telling Secrets)

God didn’t want to lose us so He became a human. The pain of being human is something Jesus knows all too well, but He doesn’t want you to deny your human experiences.

A bankrupt heart has led many to God. They acknowledged their human condition and then believed Christ was the only solution. 

Solomon said God planted eternity in the heart. God put within the soul an ache which our humanness can’t satisfy. 

What part of your human condition keeps you from seeking God?

—-Click below for lyrical video by Brett Eldredge (“Where the Heart is”)