Caverns of the Heart

Once upon a time, I was a dirt specialist – a soils and foundation engineer. I never knew that playing with mud pies could equate to a career; neither did I intend to play with mud pies when I went to college to be an engineer. I just sorta happened into it because the job I had back then allowed the newbies to rotate into different groups exploring different fields.

I landed in the environmental sciences department, and I learned that soil is a funny thing. On the surface, it just looks like soil, or as most people say – dirt. But sometimes, hidden under the surface, there are wide caverns of emptiness. Generally, the pockets of air are far more subtle than wide expanses of emptiness. They are smaller and spread out, but these small areas of hollow space can be just as dangerous as the wide expanses at times.

There are three major ways to find out where the pockets of air are – perhaps more. One, apply pressure to the area. Two, flood the area. Three, test the soils at varying depths to see what lies under the surface. The third, though less precise is the only safe way to scope out the depth without potential catastrophe. Applying pressure is like building a house that starts sinking or dealing with cracks in the foundation, and flooding the area could cause a sinkhole.

What if our hearts are like the earth? What if our hearts have pockets of space that are waiting to be filled? I think maybe we all have pockets of space intentionally placed in our hearts – caverns of the heart. I think deep down we all recognize empty places within that we want to fill with goodness or hope or love, but sometimes they are filled with failure, loss, sadness, and fear. What if God means to expose the empty areas by applying pressure, flooding the heart, or by testing the heart to help you come to Him to fill it with Jesus? What if emptiness is intentional? What if the point of those weak places are so that we will seek more? And in seeking more, we will find Jesus.

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When God created Adam and Eve, what if there were caverns hidden in their hearts even though they walked with God, talked with Him, and supposedly knew Him? What if in the cool of the day, God Himself, the breath of Heaven, wanted more of Adam and Eve, so He allowed pressure to be applied through that ole serpent? And because there were caverns in Eve’s heart, she ate off of the tree He told her not to eat of. I am not saying that God caused sin, but what if God was giving them opportunity to lean into God in that moment when the nasty serpent slithered over and tempted Eve. I don’t know, but what I do know that is all of creation has been seeking Jesus ever since that moment.

Consider these verses from Romans:

“We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies.” Romans 8:22-23

Over and over again, we see commands in the Bible to

“But if from there you seek the Lord your God, you will find him if you seek him with all your heart and with all your soul.” Deuteronomy 4:29

The condition to finding God is wholehearted seeking. But the story gets interesting when we realize that Jesus came to seek and save the lost. What if there is absolutely a point to everything that seems meaningless and empty and exacerbating? As always Jesus flips the story around in His subtle yet dramatic fashion. What if Jesus is seeking me and what if through these words, He is reaching out to you? to the empty caverns, to the weak places, to the hard, to the lonely? What if those weak, empty voids – catastrophes waiting to happen, are really ways in which Jesus is longing to make our hearts whole?

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