Lazy Heart

When I was a middle school teacher I had my one big magic book.
Each August before school began I’d arm myself for the upcoming school year by visiting the teacher supply store. Posters and maps. Sticky Putty. Next aisle was staplers and hole punchers. Then there would be row with hundreds of the dark green classic teachers’ planning books on shelves. Every iteration of planning book to fit the needs of all kinds of teachers could all be found there.
The book I always chose had big boxes for planning for each class period organized in week by week at the back of the book and the class registers in the front.
Ahh.
A new book for a new school year. There is something clean and disciplined about a crisp, perfect new planning book.
I’d sharpen my pencil, sit down with my curriculum and begin to plan out the first month of school. I’d print everything carefully and neat little rows. As soon as I received my class rosters, I’d print each of their names in pencil by class, last name first, first name last.
By January my planning boxes would be littered with red pen scribbled in the corners as I made adjustments, the lines in my class registers would be eraser upon eraser as students moved classes, and the book itself would be bent and the pages cluttered with paper clips as dividers. I’d gotten lazy and hurried as the months wore on.
My perfect book would be worn and tired before the school year was even half-way done.
If I’m honest, sometimes I feel like that halfway-through-the-school-year book.
I’m cluttered, even though I began so neat and ordered. I am filled with eraser marks and pencil lead. My heart is lazy and fat with the school year, it’s bent and broken and torn in place.
With matters of the heart, I can’t just “buy a new book.” Oh, that would be too easy.
The human heart doesn’t have the luxury to reinvent itself every time it needs rejuvenation. Or redirection. Or reprimand. What about the heart that’s lapsed into selfishness {mine} or the heart that has eased into comfort {mine too}. And there’s the heart that has been broken too wide and then split up the other side, or the heart that has been hardened. How do I start over with any of that? I can’t just buy a new book and sharpen my No. 2 Ticonderoga.
The answer is to allow the One who created my heart to renew it. He can make it crisp and new and clean again. He can smooth the bent and broken pages and straighten the places that have gone crooked. He can erase the sin and the grief with His blood.
He can make the heart lean and efficient, sensitive and empathetic, compassionate, caring.
God can re-make my heart. If I allow Him.

Do you ever feel like you have a cluttered, lazy heart?