The Heart is a Muscle

The heart is a muscle. Both the physical heart and the emotional one. Our feelings may really stem from a part of our brains, yet we say that feelings rise from the heart. Why? Because it pumps our blood which is a symbol of passions.

There is no life without the heart to drive the circulation of blood through the body.  There is no point to life without love. “And if I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And if I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and if I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profiteth me nothing.” I Corinthians 13: 2-3.

The heart is a muscle.

A muscle that is overworked aches and knots up. Sometimes it’s a dull ache. When injured, torn, or stretched suddenly the pain is searing, shooting through you. So it is with the heart. When this muscle is used wrong, it aches, it burns, it feels like it is being ripped in half. Sometimes it feels like a heart-attack. 

Like a muscle, the heart needs time to heal from its injuries.

Like a muscle, it needs to be strengthened by slowly increasing what it can bear. Something happens, testing its strength, it lives on through despite the pain, but now it’s stronger than before. Something worse happens, again it hurts, but it lives on though. Something even worse happens and it is ready to be stretched to that limit. If this even worse thing had happened at the heart’s original strength, it would have been too much for it.  You would have died of a broken heart or become as hard as stone.