Here's my heart

     I was listening to my music today and heard the song that this piece is based on. I was able to spend some time thinking about it again, and wanted to write some of that out to share some of the meaning that it has in it for me. I  hope that at the very least it will cause you understand better the images, and also that you might look closely at the words of this hymn. There is so much beauty in the words that its writer penned as a prayer to his God...to our God!

     

     There are some times when a phrase will bring to mind a very vivid image, usually in my mind an illustration or picture of the phrase. One example of this led my making of this piece, which was one of the last assignments in my drawing 2 class this past semester. I do a lot of thinking and processing in my journals and sometimes that includes a writing out a song that absolutely speaks to the subject, or making a sketch...or sometimes both. 

     I remember a few years back, I was listening to a Chris Rice hymns CD while writing, and the song "Come Thou Font of Every Blessing" came on. I don't recall what I was experiencing at the time or what I was writing, but I remember really hearing for the first time the line in the last verse that goes: 

Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,

prone to leave the God I love;

Here's my heart, oh take and seal it,

seal it for thy courts above.

     "Here's my heart." Very vividly in my mind I pictured hands holding a heart, but open, reaching out and offering it. "Here's my heart Lord." I remember drawing that picture in my journal that morning...and so many times since in order to remind myself of the posture that I need to have at all times toward my God. My heart is weak and changing, it is prone to wander, prone to leave my God and instead seek fulfillment elsewhere. It sets up things of this world as idols, it is selfish and proud. My only hope is to allow God to capture it and to offer it completely to Him. To give it over to His care and to beg Him to place His mark upon it. 

     To Come back to this semester, we were given the assignment to make a triptych--three separate pieces that work together as a whole. Usually the center piece is the focal point and the pieces to either side compliment, enhance and lead into it. As I considered subjects for my drawing, my mind came back to the "Here's my heart" drawing, and I began to sketch, working out how I could make it into three pieces. In the end, I placed the "Here's my heart" in the center, flanked on either side with pictures of the condition of the heart before and after it is given wholly to God.

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   The first panel is "Prone to wander." It shows the heart caught under a net. It is a picture of how, when our heart is wandering, we must always be chasing it down and recapturing it. But notice, while the heart is "freely" doing whatever it feels like doing, it is under the net. It is not truly free.

   

     The second, and center panel, again, is the picture that I feel is a perfect illustration of surrender, the giving up and turning over to God of the heart. The human hands still hold the heart, but they are open, letting go, not clinging to it. "Here's my heart."

      The third panel is "Take and seal it", and it shows the heart no longer in the human hands, but sealed by God, stamped with His signet ring. It is free, with nothing holding it, but it carries the mark of God upon it. It belongs fully to Him. The stamp that is on the seal is the Hebrew for the words "I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine."

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.

Here I raise my Ebenezer,
Here by Thy great help I've come.
And I hope by Thy good pleasure
Safely to arrive at home.
Jesus sought me when a stranger,
Wandering from the fold of God.
He to rescue me from danger
Interposed His precious blood

Oh that day when freed from sinning
I shall see Thy lovely face.
Clothe it then in blood washed linen
How I'll sing thy sovereign grace.
Come my Lord no longer tarry
Take my ransom soul away.
Send Thine angels now to carry
Me to realms of endless days.

Oh to grace how great a debtor
Daily I'm constraint to be!
Let Thy goodness like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to thee.
Prone to wander Lord I feel it
Prone to leave the God I love.
Here's my heart
Oh take and seal it.
Seal it for thy courts above.