Photo and Commentary ©2023 by Shelley Schurch
Sunday, August 20, 2023
We have a Resident Heart in our house, the one you see in the photo above. We bought it June 27, which happens to be my husband’s birthday, to use in the Vacation Bible School program that night. After VBS week was over, we brought it home and I tied it to the arm of a living room lamp. For a few days, I thought.
It’s still with us. Not as robust as it originally was, but 54 days later it’s still bouncing at the end of its ribbon, especially when we have the ceiling fan on.
It’s not that I don’t “have the heart” to cut it loose and throw it away. But it’s become a mild experiment, watching to see how long it takes a $1.25 balloon to dwindle down.
Meanwhile, as I watch it bob and weave with the air currents, I muse on this current season of heart celebrations: two bridal showers, two weddings, one 60th wedding anniversary. Lots of love.
The bridal showers and weddings celebrate two marriages of people in their 20’s, young people with Hopeful Hearts. Many years down the road of shared life, the anniversary celebration is a tribute to two people with Resilient Hearts. They have weathered the commonplace and the crises of life together, aware that God has been with them every moment and every mile of their journey.
The reason I tied our heart balloon to the arm of the living room lamp is that I’ve had experience with untethered balloons in years past. They’ve been known to roam, even ascending and descending the stairs of our two-story home, unbidden. When we had our beloved cat Joseph, he was unnerved by the presence of a traveling balloon, and we found it a bit unsettling ourselves to come face-to-face with the balloon in our upstairs hall at night when we thought it was peacefully settled downstairs in the living room.
These untethered balloons, with their Restless Hearts, remind me of what is perhaps St. Augustine’s most famous quote. As is true of most oft-quoted sayings from years ago, you can find it with slight variations in wording, but this is what I think is the original sentence from Augustine’s Confessions:
. . . Thou hast formed us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee.
And that, in turn, reminds me of one of my favorite heart declarations from the Psalms. Many years ago I wrote David’s words on the flyleaf of my Bible, echoing his response as mine, too:
When You said, “Seek My face,”
My heart said to You, “Your face, LORD, I will seek.”
(Psalm 27:8 NKJV)
The original Hide and Seek was not a game, but a drastic rupture of the relationship Adam and Eve had with God:
And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden. Then the LORD God called to Adam and said to him, “Where are you?” So he said, “I heard Your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself.”
(Genesis 3:8-10 NKJV)
Ever since Eden, when God’s friends first became fearful, God has been seeking us, and longing for us to seek Him, in a response of love and not fear. All the while the devil is battling for our souls, and doing everything he can to disrupt a heart-to-Heart relationship with our Creator and Redeemer.
As we step out into this brand-new week, we can say, along with David, “Your face, Lord, I will seek,” and ask Him to help us truly see Him, with all the devil’s distortions cleared away.
And one of these days – each day one day closer – we will truly see Him face-to-Face!