A New Heart
The time: Ash Wednesday, February 1996. The place: worship in the chapel at St. Boniface Hospital in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Sitting there, eyes closed, the words of the service washing over me but not really sinking in until suddenly the singing of the psalm refrain began to filter through. The voices lifted in prayer were singing “Mon Dieu, donnez moi un coeur nouveau.” As the words in the language of my youth began to sink in, the tears began to fall. As I looked up to gaze at the cross hanging at the front of the chapel, the faces of the nuns who were singing also came into focus. They were smiling at me. They knew why I was there – they knew why I was weeping. Their compassion and love surrounded me, and I wept even harder.
Garth, my husband, my soul-mate, the heart-of-my-heart, the one who I adored and loved was laying in the ICU having just undergone open-heart surgery. He’d made it through the surgery okay, but all I could see was his bruised and battered body as it lay unmoving on the bed, still unconscious and barely recognizable. When they do open-heart surgery they bring the body temperature down and his skin was cold to the touch and he looked so pasty and pale. There were tubes and wires hanging all over, he was intubated and they hadn’t really cleaned him up yet so there were spots of dried blood in places. I was feeling shattered – gutted really. They were having trouble stabilizing his breathing and I was scared – so scared. We’d only been married a few years at that point - our lives together were really just beginning and the thought of living without him was more than I could bear.
As I sat there in the chapel, surrounded by the compassion of the nuns, the words of Psalm 51 sank deeper into my being -
“Create in me a clean heart, O God
and put a new and right spirit within me”.
The presence that is God’s love enveloped, enfolded me like a cloak, touching and filling my heart, mind, soul and I knew with certainty with every fibre of my being that no matter what happened, everything would be okay. Garth had just received a clean heart – a new heart really, God had touched me in that moment and cleansed my heart of doubt and fear. We were being given another chance for life and living. There hasn’t been an Ash Wednesday since that I haven’t recalled that moment in the chapel – feeling loved by God so deeply, profoundly, completely.
The season of Lent reminds us that once again we are given another chance to recall where we fall short of the mark God has placed before us; another chance to change direction, another chance to allow God to create a clean heart within us, to fill us with a new and right spirit.
In Lent, we may be led to evaluate ourselves more than at any other time of the church year - to remind us that we are so in need of a Saviour – that we can’t do any of this living stuff on our own. In the good times, we may be fooled into thinking that we can do it by ourselves and it is in those dark nights of the soul when we realize that it is impossible to do it on our own. It is helpful for us to have this season of Lent when we can take time to look at ourselves honestly. A time to seek clarity in light of the cross and resurrection. Lent is a time to grow in self-understanding, a time to rethink, refocus, and most importantly, Lent is a time to rediscover love.
The scriptures tell us that we hold in our hearts what we treasure. Lent asks us to look deep within our hearts and ask ourselves,
“What do we treasure?”
”What do we hold in that centre of our being?”
In our church family at the beginning of our worship, we say together the words of the Shema -
“Hear O Israel, the Lord your God is one Lord;
and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,
and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.
You shall love your neighbour as yourself.”
Then in our confession during Lent, we pray together
“We confess that we have sinned against you in thought, word and deed. By what we have done, and by what we have left undone. We have not loved you with our whole heart, we have not loved our neighbours as ourselves.”
We start our worship with the command to love God, neighbour, self – to love all of God’s creation and our confession acknowledges that we fall short as individuals and as a community of faith. Lent is the season when we acknowledge our lack, not to wallow in our sinfulness but to realize our hope in Christ. There is so much more! When we focus only on our sinfulness we lose sight of Jesus who brought life – purpose – meaning. To focus on our own personal sinfulness takes us so far within the self – we lose sight of who we have been created to be - to focus on who we are not, instead of who we are - children of God – in love, for love, with love, to love!
“Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and put a new and right spirit within me.”
(Psalm 51:10)
In the words of the Collect for Purity:
“Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hidden. Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you, and worthily magnify your Holy Name, through Christ our Lord. Amen.”