Open Heart Surgery

The heart continuously heaves up and down as the surgeon pries at it with various tools. He delicately digs in with prickly forceps and razor sharp blades. Attentively he works, his bloody hands dipping down into the burrow in the patient's chest. All the while the patient lies prostrate, oblivious to the surgeon's working. If you have the guts to watch the procedure it can be fascinating.

While most of us don't need to endure open heart surgery we need heart surgery of another kind. What I mean is clearly stated by Jeremiah when he says, "the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?" The illness of man's heart is also shown after the great flood when God said he would never curse the ground because of man "for the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth." Obviously we need heart change.

Even David, a man after God's own heart, understood the need for heart surgery when he said, “Create in me a clean heart, O God." But I think he understood not only the need for a heart change but who the surgeon must be. Only God can carry out a successful heart surgery. The procedure may be intense but the outcome is vital.

We need a heart change. Nonetheless, we recoil from the operating table. Most people would rather not have their chests ripped open and their hearts pricked at. We are obsessed with the magnitude of the operation, not because we want it but because we need it. If our dirty hearts don't kill us our obsession will.