If My Heart Was a House

One of the most amazing things about the human heart is its capacity to love. I think it's a testament to the love of God and how our souls were made to crave it; to run on it, to be empowered and enlarged by it.

 I once read a book about a boy that was adopted by a loving set of parents who later found out they were expecting a baby. The boy panicked, thinking that this family he had grown to love were going to send him away since they would now have the number of children they'd always wanted. His adopted Mum sat down with him and explained how when she was expecting her second child, she panicked too. She already loved her first daughter 100%. How could she share that love with another baby? But that was not how love works. She loved each of her children - adopted or not - completely. She loved each child 100%. And I'm beginning to get what she meant.

Close your eyes. Just think about all the people you love, those closest to you. Think on all the people you care about, and how different each and every one of them are. I don't know about you, but my heart does strange things when I stop to think about that. It is as if with each face that comes to mind, my heart surges with affection, or admiration, or protectiveness or hilarity. Every person that I love, when I think about them, invokes a wholehearted response, yet each completely different. Each swell of emotion is full of subtle nuances of love in a variety of forms — as if the uniqueness of each individual wrote its own way for me to love them, and is full of their own personality and character. Yet in the many ways I deeply value each individual in their originality, it can all be contained in the single word "love".

Isn't that incredible? Isn't that so like God? That He would express His love in innumerable facets, like an impossible diamond? Every little thing about a person that causes your heart to enlarge is just a glint of God's love shining out of them and entering your own heart: a quadrillionth of the whole that is God Himself, in you.

I think the heart's capacity to love can never be reached; its maximum never attained. After all, if God is infinite, likewise His love would be limitless for our minds to comprehend. I imagine our hearts could be likened to a vast catacomb of rooms, where each new person to walk into your heart causes a door to open into a room you never knew was there - completely unique and set apart from all the others. Yet no matter how many doors are opened, we will never get to the end of the house.

Sometimes you see a light come on underneath a door. Very slowly the door begins to creak open and you can peek in, seeing a shadowy figure in the corner, which you have to take the time to draw them out into the open. Other doors are thrown open with a gust of wind and stepping inside takes your breath away. Sometimes you find yourself in a hallway of open doors unexpectedly, and suddenly there's a whole new wing of the house in existence you never knew was there, and you wonder how you lived without it. Other times walls come tumbling down, tearing out old debris and making the room so much larger and more inviting than it ever was before.

It's an overwhelming and sometimes frightening thing to explore the house that is one's heart. I've felt the temptation to close all of the doors and stay inside the rooms I am most familiar with. Yet at the same time I've felt the exhilaration and awe of God throwing up the shades to let light pour into great ballrooms in such a show of glory that it causes tears to flow freely down my face. It's a beautiful ache to feel one's heart growing larger, making room for the people you meet, and the love of God to pour into and through you.

 It is beautiful, but it hurts. Sometimes you find yourself outside of the door to rooms you lived in your whole life, but now see your Father gently closing. To love anything is to be vulnerable, and to be vulnerable means to be hurt and sometimes be scarred. But scars can carry love, too. After all: the Man who loved most still has the scars to prove it. Should we expect love to be anything less for us?

It's been amazing to look back on the many experiences God has brought me through, enlarging my heart in the process. At times I can be cowardly and want to withhold love; refrain from opening doors. With so many people to love already, can I really handle anyone else? Shouldn't I just be content with those I already know? Do I have room for more?

Silly heart. If I house the Spirit of the Living God, I cannot out-love Him. Throughout the world, and the many places I wander; wherever He takes me, He gives me love enough. I can vividly remember times over the years where God has thrown rooms open to love and my heart was enlarged so suddenly that the beautiful pain caught in my throat and brought me to tears. I can still now recall the feelings; it was overwhelming and humbling to be shown a love and find I'd been given His love to return. I know I will continue to experience this stretching till the day I die: exploring every last nook and cranny of this heart my Father calls home. May it ever be His, never ceasing to invite whoever He wills inside.

"If my heart was a house, You'd be home." — Owl City

"Dwell in Me, and I will dwell in you. Abide in Me, and I will abide in you. Just as no branch can bear fruit of itself without abiding in (being vitally united to) the vine, neither can you bear fruit unless you abide in Me. I have loved you, [just] as the Father has loved Me; abide in My love [continue in His love with Me]." — John 15:4, 9 AMP