“My son, give your heart to me” (Proverbs 23:26); to me in whom alone your heart can
rest and for whom it yearns without knowing it.
Your heart has been kept from giving itself fully to any created being, because none of them has all that it requires. Yet, your heart will find all it needs in the God of Jesus Christ, and without him those needs will never be met. More than that, without him your heart will never really understand its needs, for this living God both satisfies them and reveals them to us at the same time.
Your heart has been kept from giving itself fully to any created being, because none of them has all that it requires. Yet, your heart will find all it needs in the God of Jesus Christ, and without him those needs will never be met. More than that, without him your heart will never really understand its needs, for this living God both satisfies them and reveals them to us at the same time.
Among all created beings, take the one you know to be most loveable and most loved. Isn’t it true that you cannot try to yield yourself to his love without soon finding a barrier that unmercifully stops the impulse of your heart; a barrier that seems to say to you with bitter defiance, “You will come this far and no farther”?
Why is that? It is because the creature is mortal. There is not a day when you have no reason to say to yourself in the morning, “He could be taken away from me before evening.”
But suppose you could give your heart to an object from whom nothing in the world could separate you and to whom you were permitted to yield yourself with the joy of life, the freshness of life, the certainty of life, and the immortal power of life! Very well, this God whom I proclaim to you is what your heart requires. He “is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). Hold fast to him; he will in no wise escape from you. Call to him; he will always answer. Count on him; he will never fail you. And when you yourself “depart and are no more” (see Psalm 39:13), it will be to go elsewhere in order to behold him without a veil and to unite yourself to him without hindrance.
Why else would you find this barrier to a full giving of your heart to a created being? It is because that creature, even if he were immortal, is finite. How could he respond to the infinite needs of your heart? Enclosed within the narrow confines of the flesh, constrained by his will, limited by his illumination, equally incapable of testifying to all that he feels and of sensing all that your heart expects from his, how could he be enough for you? Perhaps in an impulsive moment, touched by so much devotion, so many attractions, such varied worthy traits, you think that there is nothing more to desire in your happiness except to see it continue. But the very next moment, you return to yourself and step out of your tender illusions. In spite of your best efforts to contain it, this cry escapes from you: “And yet, that really isn’t it. My heart is begging for something else!”
Very well, that something else, that infinite thing that will fill, that will overflow the full capacity of your heart, you will find in the God whom I proclaim to you. You will find it in this God who possesses light and power and truth and life, all without measure. No, he himself is all of that, and it is from his bosom that everything on earth that has some share in those sacred names flows forth like an inexhaustible treasure.
Finally, why do we find this barrier to giving our hearts fully to another creature? It is because that creature is sinful and, if he knows himself at all, reduced to joining you in saying, “I know that nothing good dwells in me” (Romans 7:18). And you could abandon yourself to him without reservation? What! That fallen creature for whom you need to beg for God’s forgiveness as you do for yourself; that creature in whom you find the same battle of the Spirit against the flesh that takes place in you; that creature whose infirmities and weaknesses you must bear with each day, just as he must bear with them in you—is that the one in whom you should seek and in whom you could find what your heart demands? Oh, unworthy thought!
Give fresh air to that unhappy soul who struggles in an atmosphere unable to sustain life. Give daylight to that prisoner who groans in a deep dungeon far from the sweet gleam of the sun. Give bread to the hungry, water to the thirsty—and give to man’s heart, as the object of his supreme attachment, a being who is “holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners” (Hebrews 7:26). Love for such a being can, at last, be the holiness of our hearts, and serving him the holiness of our lives! Very well, in these traits, how can you fail to recognize the God I proclaim to you?”
— Adolphe Monod, An undivided Love: Loving and living for Christ, sermon entitled “give me your heart”
www.tunl.duke.edu/~cwalker/AULchap1.pdf
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