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Blessed Are the Pure in Heart

             Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. (Matthew 5:8)

Once again, the heart was considered the seat of the will, not the emotions. The pure in heart, therefore, are those who don’t have mixed motives. A couple of months ago, someone asked each member of a group why they were doing what they were doing. Most of the people said something about helping others, and I’m all for helping others, but when it came to my turn, I couldn’t say that. I was crocheting afghans and shawls, and I was happy that the would be used to help cancer victims and those in needs of some love or compassion, but the truth was and is that I crochet them for something to do. I crochet them to keep me (at least some of the time) from being distracted by other things while I’m listening to someone, and, I’ll admit that part of it is that I am amused by the reactions of others to my crocheting while walking. Please don’t be impressed. It’s just something I do, and doing is important to me, whether we like it or not. I say it wasn’t would be deceitful.

The point is that it’s easy to have motivations that others don’t approve of. It’s easy to have motives that aren’t pure because they’re mixed. Part of me (my ego?) likes the idea that I can multitask while doing one thing in addition to multitasking by seeing how many things I can do at the same time. But I also recognize that often, multitasking leads to suboptimal performance.

Another point that needs to be made is that we’re not necessarily talking about something God does. If we have a pure heart, that doesn’t mean that God sprinkles blessings into our lives. He can. He may. But this may be one of the many “simply true” things found in Scripture. I find it hard to relax or do something “just for fun.” Much of what I consider fun, other people wouldn’t. There have been times I’ve driven through Presque Isle State Park and felt driven rather than relaxing. I feel guilty about reading fiction unless I’m listening to it while driving or it’s a novel of some sort of significance. If I’m not multitasking, I’m wasting time. So it would be a blessing to have just one motivation - a heart given purely to just one thing, even  for just that moment. 

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