“Harden Not My Heart”

O Lord, when I stand before You I am stripped of every illusion.

There is no incense to veil the truth

no gentle choir to drown out the rebellions of my heart.

I see the wilderness within me

and the barren stones that once I imagined were altars.

It has been forty years and I still complain about the manna

as though the work of Your hands

should conform to the cravings of my tongue.

I read of Meribah and Massah

and I wince

not because they seem distant

but because they feel like home.

The Israelites thirsted and blamed You

and I have done the same

as though You had led me into the desert to starve

rather than to save.

“Oh that today you would listen to His voice

Harden not your hearts”

yet my heart is hard.

Hard not with ignorance

but with the polish of pride

self carved

self guarded

self praised.

You have poured mercy like water

and I have tasted it like a critic

not a beggar.

I have measured Your gifts on the scale of my desires

and found them wanting

as though the Lord of Glory

should respond to the demands of a peevish child.

The Desert Fathers trembled at the sin of complaint.

Abba Poemen said

“Teach your heart to follow your lips in giving thanks to God in all things.”

But my lips sing gratitude

while my heart whispers litigation.

St Isaac writes

“He who complains has already abandoned God in his heart

even if his tongue still confesses Him.”

If that is true

then many days

I have been a practical atheist

a believer in doctrine

yet a doubter of Providence.

Modern elders name the disease more honestly.

Elder Aimilianos of Simonopetra warned:

“The worst temptation is not lust or pride

but the spirit that accuses God.”

I have known that spirit.

It steals into the soul disguised as wounded honesty

as discernment

as realism

but its breath smells of bitterness

and its wages are exile.

The wilderness outside becomes wilderness inside.

Forty years is not too long for God

but it is an eternity for a heart that wants something else.

You said

“Their hearts are astray

these people do not know My ways.”

I know Your words

but I do not know Your ways.

Your ways are kenosis

and I want progress.

Your ways are hiddenness

and I want visibility.

Your ways are self offering

and I want fulfillment.

And yet

even as I confess this

I hear the aching mercy in Your warning.

Your anger is not the outburst of a tyrant

but the grief of a Father who sees His child

chasing mirages while the Well stands open.

You swear

“Never shall they enter My rest”

but it is I who press against the door

with my complaints

with my comparisons

with the restless idol called “my will.”

O Lord

let today be the day I listen.

Let today be the day my heart softens

and bends

and breaks if need be.

Grant me tears sweeter than the taste of entitlement

a silence deeper than self pity

and a gratitude that is not performance

but conversion.

For You have been faithful in famine and abundance

You have not let me fall

Even when I leaned away.

If I waited a thousand lifetimes

I could not repay Your mercy

but I could finally recognize it

and bow.

Strip me

of the god of my ego.

Teach me the holy art

of uncomplaining love.

Plant in me the dangerous seed of gratitude

that grows in deserts

blooms in prisons

and bears fruit on crosses.

And should I walk another forty years

Let it be not as a critic of the journey

but as one who knows

that the cloud by day

and the fire by night

have always been enough.

Amen.