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Reflections on a Pure Heart

By Faith Marsalli, August 11, 2002

Matthew 5: "How Blest are those whose hearts are pure; they shall see God."

On February 12, 1944, Anne Frank wrote these words in her diary:

"Today the sun is shining, the sky is a deep blue, there is a lovely breeze and I am longing - so longing for everything. To talk, for freedom, for friends, to be alone.

"And I do so long....to cry! I feel as if I am going to burst, and I know I would get better with crying; but I can't, I'm restless, I go from room to room, breathe through the crack of a closed window, feel my heart beating, as if it is saying, 'can't you satisfy my longing at last?

"I believe it is spring within me, I feel that spring is awakening, I feel it in my whole body and soul. It is an effort to behave normally. I feel utterly confused. I don't know what to read, what to write, what to do, I only know that I am longing."

She articulates for us so beautifully the restlessness and longing that is part of the human condition. We are not born with a peaceful, contented nature, are we? We have an ache in our souls to be fully alive. We are insatiably drawn to beauty, goodness, truth and unity beyond ourselves.

I believe this ache, this hole in your soul, this urgent longing to be fully alive will lead us in one of two directions throughout the course of our lives. The powerful drive to be satisfied will either move us towards God, or in constant search of someone or something to fill the nagging emptiness.

Last week, Tyler shared with us how he used to dislike unprogrammed worship because his mind would wander all over the place and that one of his discoveries at Yearly Meeting was that God was with him even in his wanderings and distractions. This is the picture of God I want to hold in front of you this morning. Tyler has made a great discovery about our spiritual journey. God is present within us and around us, even when we are unaware of that presence.

If you have been on the spiritual journey long, these God moments are wonderful, aren't they? I often wish I could sustain the spiritual high and the sheer joy of knowing God loves me. I wish I could call up these "God is alive!" moments on demand when I feel down or discouraged.

Why do you think God's presence is so elusive to us? Why is it so difficult for us to see the holy presence of God in the ordinary places of our lives? There is great insight in the story of the prodigal son, which we read together last week. The prodigal son is restless, longing to be free and alive, so he leaves the love and security of his father's home and travels to a distant land in search of something. The son is blind and unaware that everything he really needs is right there in front of him. He leaves love in search of love. He leaves freedom in search of freedom.

If God is always present with us, what hides our perception of this reality? What hinders our awareness of God?

Jesus gives us a great clue in the Sermon on the Mount, "Blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God." Hmm....How do we purify our hearts and enter into a face to face encounter with God?

I believe the first step to a pure heart is to humbly acknowledge we have a need to be purified. We all have an ongoing need to be purified of our unhealthy self concern and preoccupation with our own agendas. We have all come into this world with a restless nature. We all are filled with a longing to be satisfied. All of these things reveal our neediness.

The next step to a pure heart is to acknowledge that God is our source of wholeness, our completeness, and the only true fulfillment of our deepest longings. Everything else we reach for is a counterfeit of the real thing.

It is important to remember that a pure heart is not a perfect heart, but a heart that is open and receptive to seeing God.

Are we interested in this journey to which faith calls us? I want to remind you that this doesn't happen without our cooperation, without our willingness to sit with all our distractions, to accept our restless natures, and to trust in God's love for us even in the face of our doubts and unanswered questions.

It's amazing, really, when we enter into an ongoing personal relationship with God, we begin to change. Our hearts are purified. And purity of heart will lead us from an unhealthy self concern to a growing concern for the needs of others. Purity of heart will help us to hold our own agendas lightly, to be more flexible, more trusting. A heart that is pure will feel a sense of awe and wonder in the truth, beauty and goodness of God. We will begin to recognize the real thing when we see it.

We will still feel restless and long for great experiences of being fully alive, but this restlessness is what reminds of of our need for God. We might, like the prodigal, still wander off to that distant land searching for something to fill us. We all have our distant lands, don't we? But more and more often we will return home to the real thing, to the One who has been there, loving us all along.

Listen again, to Paul's great advice:

"We don't yet see things clearly. We're squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won't be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We'll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!

But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love." 1st Corinthians 13: 12-13, The Message translation

Faith Marsalli, August 11, 2002