God works like a statin

Years ago I had a moped with a two stroke 50cc engine that ran on a mixture of petrol and oil. This worked well most of the time but the carburettor had to be serviced regularly because it would get blocked up the oily deposits. Then the bike would come to a stuttering stop. It would make cough like noises and then you knew you had a long push home. I speak from experience!

With an engine if some component gets dirty you can take it out and clean it up and when you put it back the engine will work much better. I learnt how to clean out the carburettor with clean petrol soon after I got the bike.

Do you know what statins are?  They are pills - a certain type of drugs that are given to people with heart problems to help reduce cholesterol. Cholesterol is stuff that is quite good for you in small amounts but if you get too much of it in your blood it can bung up your arteries and blood vessels. It also contributes to heart problems and strokes. Statins are widely prescribed drugs that help to reduce cholesterol and generally improve the flow of blood through all the blood vessels in your body.

In the bible the prophet Jeremiah talked about creating a clean heart in you. Now with drugs like statins this is possible. Sometimes with the great advances in modern surgery it seems that any part of the body can be taken out, cleaned up and put back. Since the 1960s we have had heart transplants and can now fit artificial valves. It is absolutely amazing what is possible these days.

But in the time of the prophet Jeremiah many centuries ago these drugs and this sort of surgery was impossible. He was using heart much more metaphorically.

When someone says on a valentines card that they send you their heart it is just another way of saying I love you. Because the heart is the centre of our being and associated with our emotions and especially with love.

Just as the arteries can get clogged up with cholesterol and the engine can get clogged up with gunk so too our lives can get too clogged up with bad feelings and other unhelpful junk so that we no longer work properly. We may feel bad about mean things we have done and we forget we can do kind deeds. We have perhaps been so mean to someone that we avoid them. But we can let God clean us up and sort us out so that we work again, like a clean heart or bike or engine.We know that when our hearts are working as God wants them to they will be full to overflowing with love. We will show that love in all our relationships with others.We will be warm hearted rather than cold hearted and people will as the words of the old song go "know that we are Christians by our love".

Reference is to Jeremiah 31:31-34

  Image"Healthy Heart" courtesy of digitalart/ FreeDigitalPhotos.net