By 
Somewhere, sometime in my lifetime, I heard these words sung in prayerful probing either by one of my grandmothers or my mother:
“Have thy affections been nailed to the cross?
Is thy heart right with God?
Dost thou count all things for Jesus but loss?
Is thy heart right with God?
Are all thy powers under Jesus’ control?
Does He each moment abide in thy soul?”
—Elisha A. Hoffman in 1809.
“What was that noise?”
Bolt upright by now—what was it, that loud crash in the middle of the night? The first thought my hubby and I had was that one of the large trees in our yard had crashed onto our roof. But no, that wasn’t the big loud bump in the night. Not a limb had fallen from the massive trees. But what was that crash? Lee said it sounded like an earthquake.
On my way back to bed a soft night-light revealed the answer to our search. The closet shelves and rods had broken away from the walls and come crashing down. Yes, my closet. My clothes. My treasures.
My first thought: is that where my treasure is? “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:21, NIV).
Oh, I justified my shopping crave as the soothing salve for a lonely heart. Yes, a time to lose myself in the resale shops, the jewelry stores, to just browse and visit with my favorite sales reps. I justified my time shopping because these women shared their needs and concerns about their children, their marriages, and asked me to pray for them. And I did. Yes, often I prayed on the spot, right in the middle of the aisle of a busy retail store. I justified my time shopping, buying.
But was that habit taking my time and my money? Had I just experienced what my treasure looked like in the middle of a ten-by-eight-foot space that was my closet, crammed with every appropriate garment, shoe, and purse for any occasion?
WAS MY HEART RIGHT WITH GOD? WHY DID I FEEL LIKE FALLING ON MY KNEES IN REPENTANCE THE NIGHT THE CLOSET CRUMBLED?
This time of the year we turn our thoughts from boughs of greenery to velvet hearts as we celebrate Valentine’s Day.
Recently, in my studies of Psalm 119 and the Hebrew Alphabet, I ran across the Hebrew meaning of the word “heart”. It means the inside, the core, the conscience, the locus. Locus in geometry is a place whose location satisfies a condition.
The closet—my closet—represented a place or places, and the condition of my heart.
The heart is our ruling center, or as Proverbs 4:23 reads in the Life Application Study Bible (NIV, 2011): Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.
In other words, our hearts are the ruling centers of the whole of you and of me, the locus. Not only is the heart the center of our spiritual activity but of all the operations of our human life.
I like the wording from The Study Bible for Women, Proverbs 4:23 (CSB): Guard your heart above all else, for it is the source of life—the locus of our life, the well-spring. So, I must guard my heart, guard how it filters what I see or want or purchase or collect, because it determines an emotion that involves an action.
The night the closet fell stirred an emotion in my heart as I picked up the crumbled piles, and sorted, and cried, and prayed for forgiveness.
An emotion of sharing overwhelmed me, and that I did. If only I had remembered saying to myself, after hearing a heart-rending missions’ message: “Lord, may I have a closet full of souls in heaven rather than a closet full of clothes on earth.”
Is my heart right with God? Is your heart right with God?
This Valentine’s Day let’s agree to check the locus of our hearts, to check the well-spring of our desires and activities. Let’s become a symbol of LOVE.
Sheryl Coffey
Sheryl Coffey is President/CEO of a nonprofit organization known as RAC-G. Sheryl’s education is in Christian Education, She has published her story in a book ‘A Lingering Fragrance”. She has founded ‘The Fragrant Hours Ministry” after the death of her only child. Sheryl displays her perfume bottle collection to illustrate the message from II Corinthians 2:14-16. She is married to Lee Coffey. Has lived in Tyler almost 20 years. Member of GABC. Bible Teacher at Christian Women’s Job Corp. 
