Infinite Love and Purity here pleads for the gift of our impure, sin-corrupted hearts. Oh, what loving condescension of the holy God! We often think ourselves good and virtuous because in our blind conceit we do not know ourselves, our own evil hearts. But is it not a true picture which Jesus draws of the human heart, and therefore also of our heart, when He says, Matthew 15:19: "For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies:"? And these vile hearts of ours the pure and holy God asks as a gift from us!

Why? O Love Divine, all love excelling! He would cleanse them from their defiling, deadly sins and make them His holy abode, where He would dwell with all His blessing, purifying, saving love. Can we refuse to give Him these sinful hearts of ours, to love Him, and to go the ways He teaches us in His holy Law and leads us in His all-wise dispensations? Look to the cross on Calvary. See how God Himself there, in His dear Son, dies and atones for our sins that we might not die but live, live in His holy, blessed communion in this world and in the world to come.

Oh, what do the many wayward sons and daughters gain who give their hearts to the fickle, sinful world instead of giving them to their loving God and Savior? Alas! they gain only an evil conscience, very often a life of bitter remorse and shame.

[devotion text by Rev. F. W. Herzberger (1920) -
from the Family Altar - CPH (1957 edition)]
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