That identifies the Heart that has beat in all of us since well before birth and faithfully functions until our last breath. It is a boneless fist of pulsating muscle.
We can feel its rhythm at times, mostly during exertion, but rarely think of it. It takes no signal from the brain. Mysteriously, it has its own electrical system and generates its own contracting sequences!
But, WOW! – does it ever do its job! Steadily. All day. Every day.
It beats about 100,000 times a day! Pumps about 200 gallons a day! Through every cell in our entire body! (How many of those do we have?!)
That adds up to about 2,000 million beats per year (about 2.5 billion per lifetime) while dispensing over 100 million gallons of blood yearly! Through what? About 60,000 miles of bodily blood vessels! Uncomprehensible? Yet real. “WOW” doesn’t really say it, does it?
Ever hear of a pump with that capacity? that durability? providing that kind of life sustaining circulation?
The heart is associated with “Love”, visually and in our psyches- probably because we feel such sensations in the center of our bodies where the heart lies. Not a bad connection.
However, we need to turn the connection around and deeply sense the need to “Love our Heart.” We each have one, thanks to the Creator’s scheme of things. But heart disease is and has been the leading cause of death! Ironic, isn’t it? This faithful fist which empowers everyday life and vitality becomes hampered and clogged by our disregard, denial and degrading lifestyles! It could comedically say, “I don’t get no respect!”
More education needed? Nah, we are overloaded with heart knowledge, we understand what it needs and what is destructive.
Can our faith in medical care, treatments and drugs change all the damage? As thankful as we are for all of these to save us from ourselves, what is the heart of the matter?
How about a restored reverence for the Creator’s work doled out to us in our personal bodies? Or about a renewed realization of the heart’s majesty? How about loving life at its core of sustenance? Or about a revisit to our “good enough care” attitudes? Or about sustaining and restoring healthfulness in our personal world?
Does it take our body’s warnings to awaken us to its working and wholeness needs? I remember well lying and foggily staring up at a monitor as a catheter slithered through my arteries to unclog and open! Confession, awakenedness, and new commitment came rather late, but not too late!
Love is of the heart which is in need of love.