Heart of Stone

My heart's been full of sadness

for many years now.

Stone upon stone

of sorrow piling up

until my heart felt like stone itself.

His Presence was missing,

absent,

vacant,

though I longed for it.

I've known His Presence before.

An inner sense

of His Being,

but it seemed to elude me over the years.

And then I went back to Uganda.

It had been 16 years.

As I sat in 

Pastor Mitchell's church 

on that first Sunday,

a ramshackle wooden shack

 plunked on a dirty, garbage strewn hill

 in the Kibuli Slum,

Ugandan voices lifting God in praise

encircled me,

and my heart began to heal.

His Presence was there.

My tears were unstoppable.

God became real to me again.

Bit by bit each stone

began to melt back into flesh.

There's a very thin veil between the spiritual world

and the concrete world in Uganda.

Maybe it's that way in all developing nations.

It's hard to describe.

The spiritual is as real as the red dirt

underfoot.

Here in America,

there's more of a brick wall

between the spiritual  

and the concrete world.

With our abundance, 

materialism,

land of plenty,

distractions,

consumerism,

and boredom

the wall is thick.

The divide feels solid here.

But the thin veil of Uganda

allowed my heart

to begin to heal.

And I am grateful.

"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)