Ezekiel 36:26-27 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.
The largest problem we face today is not racism, or economic inequities, or lack of affordable healthcare, or gun control, or a myriad of other social issues. The real problem has to do with the human heart, the lack of personal responsibility, the shirking of responsibility. And this problem of the human heart is universal; none of us is exempt.
We can live our lives in our self-created bubbles, and most of us do. We so rarely enter anyone else’s world. We don’t dare to venture beyond our comfortable, cushioned, airbag protected enclaves. We might talk about the plight of the poor, the refugee, the dispossessed, but do we put feet to solving the problem? Do we do anything more than talk?
That is because our heart needs a complete replacement. A stone heart doesn’t need a few stints to make it function properly; it needs total replacement. No successful heart bypass surgery will make if pump again. No balloon angioplasty will make a difference.
But that is what we try to do with our socio-economic and political solutions. They deny the problems inherent with a stone heart. They try to ignore the problem and deal with the perceived symptoms. They don’t deal with the facts, only the superficial symptoms.
And this problem has been around since man first left the Garden. Ezekiel is speaking to a people who have been sent into exile for their continued rebellion over generations. The LORD has spoken to them again and again through prophets sent to them, calling them to repentance and humble return. But their heard hearts have prevented them from returning.
So now in the beginning years of exile, Ezekiel hears a word of hope from the LORD. Ezekiel himself is in exile with many others. He has seen the hardships, the losses, the humiliation of those who have traveled and been resettled. He is living as a conquered person, no voice, no vote that could make a difference.
And yet, right in the middle of this, the LORD speaks a word of hope about their future. There is coming a day, he says, when the LORD will give us new hearts to replace our stone ones. What we could never do ourselves previously, we will be able to do. We will obey the Laws. We will be faithful to the Covenant. We will walk uprightly, do justice, love mercy.
I don’t know about you, but there have been and still are moments in life when I want that new heart. I feel myself getting hard to the plight of others and want to think about my wellbeing first. I get selfish. I throw a tantrum. Does this sound at all familiar.
The LORD calls us all to examine our hearts, to see if we are in the faith. If we are looking to external socio-economic or political solutions to our problems, then maybe we need to ask for a new heart, a fresh wind of the Spirit to blow in us.
This image of the Spirit breathing life into stone is right out of Genesis chapter one. The LORD breathed (same word as Spirit) into the dust of the ground (rock broken down over time) and we became living being. The LORD wants us to become new creation beings.
And this is exactly what the Gospel promises. Jesus made it possible for us to get that new heart, to start over, to have our sins forgiven and a new power to live a holy life like we were designed to live.
The Arnold Journey 