28th January 2020

“There’s a hole in the bucket, Dear Liza, Dear Liza”. “Well fix it, Dear Henry, Dear Henry”. Well I can’t my dulcet darling, says Henry, because I will need water to fix it, and I can’t carry the water to my workbench because there’s a hole in the bucket! I think of that frustrating sequence whenever my computer breaks down. To fix it requires connecting to the internet, but one can’t connect to the internet if the computer doesn’t work!

I think of that too when I ponder the following problem. There’s a hole in the human heart, says the Bible, caused not by sadness but by sin. But how is it to be fixed, for the Bible says that the fix requires the heart to believe something. “If you confess with your mouth ‘Jesus is Lord’ and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.” But how can the heart work when it’s broken? It sounds like the old ‘Dear Henry’ type dilemma.

Thankfully the Bible steers a way through this dilemma by explaining that regeneration precedes faith. If faith preceded regeneration, it would indeed be the ‘Dear Henry’ dilemma. But as it is, God’s Spirit brings the heart to life and enables it to believe, thereby applying a double-fix! The first to empower the heart to believe, and the second to respond to the heart’s believing with peace and pardon, and to fill it to the brim with living water.

DM 28^th January 2020