Listen to Your Heart

Posted by simpleysterling on Mar 30, 2010 | 1 comment

“It is not the size of a man but the size of his heart that matters.” ~ Evander Holyfield

There is a fella I have known for a number of years – twenty-two, to be exact – who is one of those “Woeisme” kind of people.  You know exactly what I am talking about here: the guy who can’t ever be content, who is always looking for a pat on the back, and the one you always have to pour encouragement into.  While I get along with him fine (and he does have his redeeming qualities), he is the kind of fella you can only take in small doses.  As a matter of a fact, he is the one you occasionally hide from when you see him in the grocery store, because you know that a mini-conversation with him will probably turn into an hour-long grouch fest, and it will leave you feeling like you need a shower.  When it comes to life, he is not a giver; “His heart is three sizes too small.”  And this dude is 6’1”, and weighs in at an amount I could not even venture to guess; yet he is diminutive.

Now I know this other fella who is “little” in the eyes of the world.  You see, I don’t refer to him as little; he brings it on himself.  He has a self-effacing humor that allows him to poke fun at his size and laugh when his friends sign him up for midget rodeos.   Yet in this man there is an exuberance for life; a joy that cannot be contained when he is surrounded by others – he actually bounces!  There is an innate energy in him that simply cannot be suppressed. You notice it in the way he listens to others, allowing them to speak their mind and keeping the conversation focused on them.  You notice it in the way he talks to others, making sure not to offend with the words he chooses.  You notice it in the way he serves others, making sure that he puts the comfort and the needs of others before his own.  While he is only 5’6” tall, and his children have all superseded him in physical height, they all have very large shoes to fill when it comes to the size of his heart, which grew three sizes larger than his body.  He is a giant among men.

There is so much more to life than what we can see on the outside.  Packaging may be everything when is comes to the hard sell.  We like bright shiny things; we like the way things “look” to us because we are visual creatures.  But what you see, honey, ain’t always what you get.  And really, in the end, how important is packaging? We all get old, we all get wrinkles, gray hair, and saggy behinds.  Even our super-sharp minds and our mad cat skills all fade to nothing.  And then what do we have left?

Simply our hearts.  When looking for prophets, priests and even kings, God never focused on the outward packaging, and he never chose who would be acceptable in the eyes of the world.  Nope!  He chose the men, the boys, the girls, and the women with the biggest hearts.  Abraham.  Sarah. Rebekah. Joseph. Samuel.  David.  Elizabeth.  Mary.  They were all chosen because God saw in them what the world did not.  I Samuel 16:7, “…Do not consider his appearance or his height…The LORD does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.”

What is the state of your heart? What kind of “man” are you being called to be? Do you hear it? Thump-thump.  Thump-thump. Thump-thump.

Listen to your heart….

Catch you on the flip side!

Ang

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