I have a
piece of artwork on the wall opposite my desk in Orlando. On it are the opening words to my favorite
hymn: “Come, thou fount of every
blessing, tune my heart to sing thy grace.” I’ve been thinking this morning
about hearts that are out of tune. For
the musically inclined, a heart can be found to be sharp or flat.

Flat,
too? Sure. As in a lost capacity for
feeling, a detachment from the world around us, a numbness to our own
emotional needs, a sense of emptiness
that distances us from the possibilities of love, of hope, of joy, of peace
that passes all understanding and instead becomes enveloped in depression and fear,
confusion and despair. Having a flat
heart has the potential to become mired in darkness, to pull the heart out of
tune and make it harder to be an empathic witness for grace.
So what
does a heart look like when it’s in tune?
I wondered how I would answer this query and it didn’t take me long to
find those June-wedding words so popular as to lose some of their power but so true
as to define heart health. “Love is
patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or
rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or
resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the
truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures
all things. Love never ends.” (From 1 Corinthians
13)
Let me suggest today, as delegates gather for the 32nd
General Synod of the United Church of Christ, that the health of the church
begins with the health of your heart. My
heart. The health of all our
relationships, the power of all our witnessing, the potential of all of our
advocacy, depends on our individual hearts and the collective heart of the
church. Even as the most intimate of our
relationships will struggle when they get out of tune, so the church is only at
its best when we are intentional about our heart health.
Come, thou fount of every blessing, tune my heart to sing thy
grace.
Streams of mercy, never ceasing, call for songs of loudest praise
Teach me some melodious sonnet, sung by flaming tongues above
Praise the mount; I'm fixed upon it, Mount of Thy redeeming love
Streams of mercy, never ceasing, call for songs of loudest praise
Teach me some melodious sonnet, sung by flaming tongues above
Praise the mount; I'm fixed upon it, Mount of Thy redeeming love
Here’s to the health of your heart and your
relationships, to the church and all it seeks to be, to the ever-present
possibility of becoming more richly attuned to the needs of the neighbor and
the world and to the melodious sonnet of God’s grace that makes it all
possible.
Be at peace, and be in touch, won’t you.
JV