Frozen Hearts

 

Yet more of the white stuff overnight. I emerge tentatively from the back door, eager to re-fill the bird feeders for the desperate wee creatures seeking sustenance, but I am cautious. Cautious with reason, for the temperature lingers at -8C and where the snow slushed in yesterday’s sunlight, today it is frozen in the morning’s overcast clouds.

I am grateful that we made a foray to the grocery store yesterday. Today, with Don nursing a bad cold and cough, and with the snow so hard-packed, I would not have been able to shovel a path or help dig out the car’s tires if they lost traction.

Yesterday’s snow could be lifted and shifted so that people and cars could move fairly freely. What was left in situ yesterday, however, today is frozen solid in place, and it would take effort and strength to dig it out.

Critical thoughts and attitudes, towards situations or individuals, if left in our hearts and minds, can soon harden into icy monuments of judgment and grudge which become increasingly harder to shift. Soft hearts can harden. Keep short accounts with God, I have often heard, and also with one another.

Jesus declares that he has come to set the captive free. Often we become captive to our own hard hearts and judgmental thinking. It is challenging to be quick to forgive, but God never asks us to do anything without giving us the strength and ability to do it. And he asks us to be quick to forgive, before temperatures can drop and freeze our grudges into place. As we forgive, so we will be forgiven.

There are public figures who I find challenging. There are probably private individuals, too, who push my buttons. Lord, I can’t clear my frozen interior by myself. I don’t want to find my heart increasingly hard, frozen in judgmental attitudes and self-righteous condemnation. Come, Lord Jesus. Set this captive free.

Forgive me, today, as I forgive those who offend me, Lord Jesus. And then, Lord, I will be free indeed.