PT ONE: …To Will One Thing

When you listen to interviews with people who really excel in their field – say like Tiger Woods, Dizzy Gillespie, Amelia Airheart, Abraham Lincoln, there usually seems to be a singularity of focus to their lives.  From an early age there was one thing that captured their imagination and called them into the future.  The people around them may have called it an obsession, which is usually what people call a thing someone loves more than they can understand.  Yet, when a obsession moves out of the realm of a hobby and into the realm of a blessing to others, maybe even liberation for others, then it’s no longer an obsession, but a vocation.

For these ‘obsessed ones’ the accomplishing of their goal was equal to what Jesus called “a pearl of great price” for which they would sell everything they had just to own the pearl.  The ironic thing in the parable about this pearl of great price is that although the pearl might be incredibly valuable, once you finally own it, you become impoverished for owning it.  And while you continue to own it, every penny of your wealth is wrapped up in this one priceless pearl.  For you to have any liquid wealth available to you, you must sell the pearl.  You have become ‘pearl-poor’.

The Lutheran theologian Soren Kierkegaard, described this singular drive as the “Purity of heart to will one thing.”  He grew up in a wealthy family in Denmark and he believed the National Church had reduced Christianity to a mere fashionable tradition adhered to by unbelieving “believers” with a “herd mentality”.  You can imagine his books were not wildly received by the Danish State Church, who shunned his work, and urged other Danes to do the same.  Kierkegaard’s writing by the name of “Purity of heart is to will one thing”, was a call to radical monotheism – allegiance to God over everything else.  Yet, none of Kierkegaard’s writings gained any kind of international popularity until years after his death.  He too remained ‘pearl-poor’ in his drive to call people to a purity of heart.  One of his last journal entries reads: “What the age needs is not a genius—it has had geniuses enough, but a martyr, who in order to teach men to obey would himself be obedient unto death. What the age needs is awakening. And therefore someday, not only my writings but my whole life, all the intriguing mystery of the machine will be studied and studied. I never forget how God helps me and it is therefore my last wish that everything may be to his honour.”

PT TWO : Create in Me …

I met an artist and entrepenuer at Cafe Ladro the other day.  In the course of our ten minute conversation she described no less than 10 ‘great ideas’ that she had, yet none of them had been realized.  She lamented, “If only someone would pay me for these ideas who would actually do them, I’d be rich”.  Her confession is no different than ours who find our hearts scattered and our wills divided among twenty different directions.  Perhaps that’s the curse of the Arteest.  (Not artist, spelled a-r-t-i-s-t, but arteest, spelled A-r-t-e-e-s-t):  All imagination with very little commitment to see it materialize.

…Okay, hold that thought for a second.

If you were around evangelical Christians in the 1980’s you’ll probably remember the song, “Create in me a clean heart”.  It was a popular little ditty whose lyrics were taken from Psalm 51, and it was relentlessly sung at every campfire and altar call.  Of course, at that time I imagined that a clean heart meant not lying, or swearing, or smoking, or participating in any general naughtiness.  Having a ‘clean heart’ was a moral status of being ‘good’.  What was lost on me was that clean heart is more accurately translated as “pure heart”, pure as in “no additives”, “made of only one thing”, “no filler”, “100% pure” and undivided.  In Kirkagaard’s definition of monotheism, purity of heart is about a quality of loyalty to your One God, not an imposed check list of do’s and don’ts to achieve moral goodness.  Naturally, the quality of faithfulness to your One God will be integrated with one’s behavior, but here the chicken really does come before the egg.  For me, this song that had become passe now takes on a whole new vitality.  “Create in me a clean heart” is a prayer for God to make my will, my desire, my life, singular in nature, undivided, and undiluted.

PT THREE : …They Will See God.

In the famous sermon called the Beatitudes, Jesus deals out a hand full of blessings, one of which is for “the pure in heart”.  To them he promises that “they will seed God.”  What that means exactly I’m not sure.  But, run over to the Gospel of John real quick.  There the first chapter says, “No one has ever seen God.  It is God, the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart who has made him known.”  What this suggests to us is, if you want to know what purity of heart looks like, look at Jesus.  And what is the one thing that Jesus wills?  Over and over again Jesus describes his will as a unity of will with his Father’s will.  And what is it?  The God who could will anything, will’s this one thing: “My Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life”.  If you have ever wondered to yourself, “What’s God’s will for my life?” – now you know.  God’s will for you, God’s one will for everyone is to trust Jesus as the sole source of all life – and really live life.

Perhaps your heart is like the Arteest, scattered and running in twenty different directions at once, which might be okay for a season, but after a while you look back and wonder why you’re stuck in the same place as you were years ago.  What if you could will one thing?  Not in a Genie-in-a-Bottle, rub a lamp and make a wish kind of way, but rather, in a pray, sweat, bleed, risk everything and devote your entire life to one thing kind of way.  What if you were freed to have the singularity of heart to will one thing?  What would it be?

“It’s here in all the pieces of my shame
that now I find myself again.
I yearn to belong to something, to be contained
in an all-embracing mind that sees me
as a single thing.
I yearn to be held
in the great hands of your heart–
oh let them take me now.
Into them I place these fragments, my life,
and you, God–spend them however you want.”

Check out the rest of this prayer by poet Ranier Marie Rilke here.