Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life. (Proverbs 4:23)
In its context, this verse suggests that keeping—or guarding—your heart means to retain wise words and resist wicked desires. But I’m afraid some people—ahem, me, too often—use it to justify being cowardly or cold instead of loving others, because we think that “guard your heart” means “don’t get hurt.”
C. S. Lewis provides the necessary rebuke:
Of all arguments against love none makes so strong an appeal to my nature as “Careful! This might lead you to suffering.”
To my nature, my temperament, yes. Not to my conscience. When I respond to that appeal I seem to myself to be a thousand miles away from Christ. If I am sure of anything I am sure that His teaching was never meant to confirm my congenital preference for safe investments and limited liabilities.…
There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell. (From The Four Loves, as found in The Inspirational Writings of C.S. Lewis, 278-279.)
Taken from http://www.desiringgod.org/Blog/1467_guard_your_heart_dont_suffocate_it/
Written by Tyler Kenney
My dear C.S. Lewis (pardon my audacity) has written right to the heart of the human heart.
Jesus loved with all and hence, he was all vulnerable.
Any ounce of holding back will not result in His death on the cross. He knew fully the joy that comes with loving, even at an enormous cost. (Heb 12:2)
And yes, it is the cost that deters us.
Sometimes, the greatest struggle within our hearts is deciding between the cost and the joy that comes after. It could be because we do not yet fully understand the joy or have the capacity to take it all in or it could be we are afraid that paying the price doesn't necessarily deliver the goods (even though the word tells us contrary) but it is ultimately the heart that wrestles with that thought.
It all comes down to sacrifice doesn't it? I guess as Christians, its either all or nothing when it comes to Love.
The whole Bible tells of a love story, which has no beginning and knows no end.
'Amazing pity! Grace unknown! And love beyond degree!'
Are you suffocating your heart?
Upon that cross of Jesus
Mine eye at times can see
The very dying form of One
Who suffered there for me;
And from my smitten heart with tears
Two wonders I confess-
The wonders of redeeming love
And my unworthiness.
Elizabeth C. Clephane
