A New Heart to Say, “I Love You.”

July 31, 2024

When I started writing this blog in May 2019, I used photos I’d taken during a photo challenge years ago. When I ran out of those photos, around November 2022, I started using what I called “photos that mean something.” While a picture may seem fairly ordinary to everyone else, they meant something to me, either at the time I took the photo, or even, to this day.

Several years ago, I wanted to make something for my wife that told her “I love you.”

At the time, I had just taken up whittling and I thought that maybe I could make something for her that wouldn’t be too embarrassing. So, I purchased this piece of wood and started to work.

A few days and one blister later, I’d finished.

And while it wouldn’t win any prizes, I gave her a heart, my heart, to say “I love you.”

A New Heart to Say, “I Love You.” #hope #joy #writingcommunity Share on X

This week, I pray we all would accept God’s offer to give us a new heart. The offer He made to the people of Israel through his prophet Ezekiel is the same offer He makes to us today. The people of the Old Testament needed restoration and renewal. They’d become spiritually and physically desolate.

God saw their plight and told Ezekiel to share His offer.

“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.” (Ezekiel 36:26, NIV)

Without Jesus, many of us may believe we are good people and that at the end of our lives we will find ourselves in heaven. We feel good about doing good things. But the Bible tells us that we are tricked by our thoughts and emotions. We are only good through our relationship with Jesus. It is through that relationship that we experience a new heart.

So much better than my carving a heart from a stock piece of wood, Jesus creates a new heart of flesh out of our hearts of stone. May you experience receiving a new heart as Jesus’ way of saying, “I love you.”