One Heart at a Time

I have just begun reading a book that I have had for several months. You know how it goes: someone suggests a good book, you buy it and it sits for a while before you get to it. Well, I decided this morning was the time I needed to get to it.

The book is called Restoring Broken Things and it is written by Steven Curtis Chapman and his pastor Scotty Smith. I really respect SCC and have loved his music for a long time. I actually met him when I was in college and he was just a new musician with a serious mullet!!! As I started the book I was looking forward to some great stories and lessons on God’s love and the power of redemption. I was not prepared for what hit me on the second page of the prologue.

If you know anything about Steven Curtis Chapman and his wife Mary Beth (does the whole family have two first names?) you know that they have adopted three little girls from China. When they adopted Shaoey, their first, they visited the orphanage where she had spent her entire life. Here is how SCC describes that event:

“Like being caught in an unexpected downpour, I wasn’t prepared for the burst of emotions that welled up inside of me as these simple elements took on enormous symbolic meaning. Two images came into mind, one right after the other. Not exactly like a song lyric, but just as real as the thought came to me: “One bed at a time…that’s how we’ve got to think about the daunting challenge of caring for so many orphans. One bed at a time.”

As I read those words I could only think of one thing: One heart at a time. That is how we must care for the lives that are broken and wounded in the society around us: One heart at a time.
I am not a huge slogan guy. At LifeQuest we don’t have a new motto every year and we don’t do acronyms or acrostics to make our point. But this one is one that is hitting me heard. For some reason this is rattling my cage in some major ways. I don’t know what it looks like or what it means, but there is something to the concept of “One Heart at a Time.”

What would happen if churches across America began to love people that way? What would it look like if Christians quit fighting one another and restored the broken places in the depth of our hearts? What would happen if we were really serious about touching one heart a time?
I don’t know. But I am committing to praying through this concept and I am committed to exploring it to the ends of the earth. Is anyone else interested?