Good heart is just not enough.
Sources and priorities count. I long to be
My Dad’s delight yet my good heart wants
To please all that pass. Conflicting preferences
Leave me confused. Endless exertions, draining:
How can I please the God I see not and people I see daily?
People pleasing is wearying! “Can’t please all and please God,”
Wisdom divulged. Don’t be the messenger, lost in the woods
Bearing a jumbo catch but chasing ants, unable to travel
So tied and so tired trying to please all along the way
While the giant catch rots on his back, smelly and scary:
The mighty wasted for the petty, crucial lost on trivial.
A good heart he had all the way but good hearts don’t save
The weary or the wasted. Great to have, admired by all
Yet good hearts don’t do what we ought, won’t take blames:
Beyond good hearts, we need discerning hearts.
Food for Thought: We all like to be considered good. Even terrorists utilize propaganda so that they can be seen as good. Why? Because good appeals and good attracts. That is how they are able to lure and recruit despite the obvious evil of their mission and approaches. Rapists and murderers focus on looking good to win the attention and affection of those they target. Are you still wondering why evil transforms itself to appear as good? When presented as good, ills get attention that it wouldn’t have, had it appeared just as ill as it truly is. Apart from extremists, same goes with every one of us. We want to be good – we want to be liked, admired and respected. We want to appear as good even when we know we are not. And it is good to be good. It however becomes a distraction when our focus is being good because we lost that nature at the fall. Left to itself, the heart of man is capable of unimaginable evil irrespective of its noble attempts with the art of doing good. It is the presence of God in man that generates genuine and lasting goodness. That is why believing is critical – our hearts and ways are influenced by what we believe not just what we do. Acts don’t make or change us but faith in God transforms us to be and to do that which is pleasing to Him. It is the fear of God in a man that restrains him from evil tendencies. On our own, our capability for good is very limited and can be as distractive as it is destructive. It is the God in us that makes and keeps us good no matter what and where we are in or what we are going through in life.
Scripture: So Jesus said to him, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good but One, that is, God. Mark 10: 18.
Prayer: Dear Lord, help me to understand the truth that there is no good in me or any other except from You and every good from You serves a purpose that brings You glory, amen.