Hearts

Another theme I have seen throughout the scriptures is the different conditions of the heart. Over the past few weeks in church I've heard about hearts being hardened, hearts being softened, or having a broken heart and a contrite spirit. So I decided to have fun with this idea.

According to the scriptures a softened heart is obviously the best one. And thinking about it I thought of two ways it could be softened. Both involve the living waters of the gospel. One hard heart could be like a sponge, when it isn't filled with the living water it is dry and hard. But once it touches the living water it soaks it up and is immediately softened again. This to me seems like those people who have already received the gospel but for some reason have begun to harden their hearts. They haven't left the spirit for long, but long enough to dry up and become hard. These people who know of the wonders of the gospel immediately desire for it once they feel it in their life again and soak up as much as they can and as fast as they can. And thusly they softened their hearts.

What about those people though that even knowing the wonders of the living water choose to stay away, or those that never have had it and have had not fully had a choice but to harden their hearts. Their hearts to me seem to be more like a rock. This is when the broken heart is needed to have a softened heart once more. At this point I'm going to stretch the metaphor slightly, it still works though. So all of these rock hard hearts need some serious work done on them. How I have seen it done quite effectively is soaking them in the living water. So in a literal since always offering a hand of friendship, showing these people how the gospel lifts up lives, the bearing of testimonies, and all the other incredible things the prophets have asked us to do when trying to fellowship a person. While rocks are mainly waterproof, any good campers knows that a rock that is soaked will have water fill up the cracks that run throughout the rock. All good campers know this because if this rock is in a fire it might explode due to the pressure of the water evaporating inside the rock. So relating this to hearts I though about how spiritual experiences are burnings in the bosom. Burnings works perfectly here. When this rock hard heart that has been soaked in the living water is exposed to the fire of the spirit it is ready to burst and be softened. This is easily seen in life. I know that I have seen peopl a million times "explode" into tears, or have an explosion of emotion, when all of a sudden all the factors line up and they feel the spirit. And even if they don't explode outwardly they still seem to have that all at once experience where they have changed.

Oh, and to cover my back in some ways. There are a lot of sponges that have never had the oppurtunity of the gospel. This is because we all lived prior to this life, so most of us only have the hardening that the veil gives us. Some are more veiled than others though and are rocks. So sponges aren't neccesarily better than rocks. Lol, I doubt that makes sense. But hopefully it did to someone.