37cm

Trust in the Lord with all your heart  and lean not on your own understanding;

in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight. Proverbs 3:5,6 NIV

370mm or about 15 inches. That’s the distance between an adult’s head and his or her heart, that’s all. I checked, and it’s true for me, so I guess I must be normal, or at least a standard fit between these two essential parts of the human body. The verse above is one of my favourites, and is inscribed on the front of my Bible, so I know it well. Or do I?

This verse deals with the head and the heart, and puts them into the right perspective. Yes, we need to use our head to reason our way through problems, but we also need to use our heart to feel if we are doing the right thing. I have always been a head person, and didn’t have much reason to use my heart, because I depended on someone else to keep me right on that score. Now I find I am solely responsible for using head and heart wisely.

A few years ago, one of my heartfelt prayers became that God would take my heart of stone, and replace it with a heart of flesh. He did, and it happened very quickly, but I had put my head on reserve, and God doesn’t ask for that. The verse asks that we ‘trust’, and I see this as an act of the heart. Trust is something we usually put in an institution or person, and for good reason, because we have no reason NOT to trust them. But the verse then says ‘do not lean...but submit’, and I see this as an act of will or a head judgement. We choose by reason if we should lean or submit, and if you have doubts about this ask any married couple who as an act of will, decide to lean and submit to each other’s wishes. That makes for a good partnership!

This 37cm is a long way when we try to work out our own problems, and sometimes we use only one of them. Then at other times, we will try to take a shortcut and merge the head and the heart. This is not a good idea either, because we need to use our head when our heart gets involved. The writer of Proverbs knew this well, and so it is no accident that this favourite verse of mine had to be revisited. I am learning, yes even now, to exercise my heart, while at the same time, use my head.