God Hears the Heart

I read an interesting article the other day and it resonated with my heart. It was about an upcoming wedding. The bride was thrilled that she had lived long enough to marry. At nine years old doctors at University of Alabama Birmingham diagnosed her with cardiomyopathy, a disease of her heart muscle.

An eleven-year-old boy died from an accident was doctors pronounced him brain dead. Doctors asked his family if they would donate his organs. At first his father refused but later said that he felt as though his son was tell him yes.

On Mother’s Day 2011, UAB surgeons transplanted the boy’s heart to the nine-year-old. Their families became friends and on August 9, 2025, the bride invited the boy’s parents to her wedding. The boy’s parents were thrilled that they allowed their son to donate his organs that other may have life.

I have read about the thrill that parents whose children donated organs, especially the heart, hear their child’s heart beating. There is a special bond forged when listening to a heart beating.

The same day that I read the Florence wedding and the heartwarming event, I received a picture of my youngest son riding his son on his back.  It’s a wonderful picture.  My son Aaron and grandson Jack Barrett are in the water.  It was a picture of love, trust, and hope.

When Aaron small, his brother Andy and sister Angel loved the water. Angel could swim before she could walk. They had traumatized Aaron making him terrified of water. I had a very difficult time teaching him to trust me and jump into my arms at the pool. When he did learn, he became a very good swimmer.

Seeing Aaron and Jack Barrett together brought back memories of my love for Aaron. Jack Barrett looks like Aaron.  They have the same smile. Since they live in Texas and I in Alabama, the picture is a sweet reminder of a dad/son relationship. I pray that Aaron will have the same heart and love for Jack Barrett that I had for him.

Aaron did trust me. When he was a baby, he would lay on my stomach with his right ear on my heart listening to my heartbeat. He would continue to sleep listening to my heart until he got so long that he pushed my chin with his bushy hair. He was around four years old when stopped laying on my stomach.

He continued to listen to my heart beat each time he hugs me the lays his right ear on my heart. Oh, what a wonderful feeling that is. In my thirty-one-day devotional, I Will Speak Using Stories, the first devotion is God Hears the Heart. It is about a small boy that when speaking his words were not comprehensible.

He volunteered to pray one Father’s Day. The congregation, with the exception of his parents, did not understand him, but God did. It was one of the best Father’s Day experiences I ever had.

I pray that you will obtain a copy of I Will Speak Using Stories.

Herman’s Hermits had a song with these lyrics:

Every time I see you lookin' my way
Baby, baby, can't you hear my heartbeat?
In the car or walkin' down the highway
Baby, baby, can't you hear my heartbeat?

Thank God He hears the heart.

But the LORD said unto Samuel, Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; because I have refused him: for the LORD seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart. (I Samuel 16:7 KJV)

SNARES

When the winds blow, I pick up sticks, trigs, and limbs.  Mostly they are from the three large oak trees near my grill and barbeque pit. These are very handy to start a fire when grilling with hickory.  The pine limbs are a nuisance, not too tasty to use for cooking.

Before I learned the art of cooking with wood, especially hickory, sticks and limbs had other uses.  Momma would instruct us to get a limb, usually a peach limb, a plum limb, or black cherry limb to whip us.  Folks that know I am from Chilton County always brag on how wonderful the peaches taste.  Well, peach limbs don’t feel too spiffy and create a bad taste in your mouth concerning peach trees.

On occasion or two, pine sticks caused me to have to retrieve peach limbs.  Once when I visited my cousins.  They told me they had found a wonderful place in the woods, and they wanted me to see it.  As I followed them into the forest, I should have been more suspicious and less trusting of them.  After all, they were my flesh and blood.  We studied in Sunday school how brothers and cousins could do deplorable things to one another, but I never suspected that my favorite kin would harm me.

As we walked in the shadows of the large pines, they commented on the birds, squirrels, and other things.  Focusing on the things above, I did not see them deliberately sidestep a place on the ground.  All of a sudden, I felt like Alice in wonderland falling into a large hole.  When I looked up, I felt like Joseph in the pit about to be sold to the Ishmaelites.  There were my four cousins looking and laughing at me in this large stump hole.

They had taken pine sticks, trigs, made a rotten network of limbs and trigs, and covered their handiwork with pine straw.  Like a lamb being led to the slaughter, I fell into their snare.  I couldn’t wait to get out of the stump hole and see how my cousins created such a wonderful snare.

My cousins got me out and I helped them to redo the snare for some other unsuspecting cousin or friend.  In fact, I could not wait to get home to my pine ticket and make me a snare for my sister, brothers, and cousins.

I did not have a deep enough stump hole and had to do a little digging covering the dirt with pine straw.  I carefully weaved me a network of trigs and sticks across the top of my hole.  I fashioned the pine straw to make it look like the area surrounding the hole.  I had to create story to lure my victims into the pine thicket.  When I did, momma taught me another lesson using a peach limb.

Thinking back, we were fortunate that we did not get hurt really bad, but we were pretty tough.  Rolling down hills in old truck tires, sliding down pine straw on old windshields, swinging from muscadine vines, swinging out trees, and other fun stuff made us tuff. 

From time to time, we got caught in our own snares.  Truck tires would hit trees, knocking the wind out of us.  We learned that pines saplings were not the ideal tree to swing out to the ground.  Windshields would break into a jillion pieces when sliding across a rock.  Muscadine vines once cut, died, and turned loose from the tree when you were at the highest point of the swing, making landing on your back uncomfortable.

Ironically, a Friday morning devotion before a Sunday visit to Catherine Baptist Church was about the Scripture in this article.  At Catherine, Joe Harrison told me of another lion hunt he had in Africa.  Joe said that they had to dig a pit and use it as a blind to shoot the lion.  Thanks Joe!  The devotion and your story were the inspiration for this article.

 

A snare is defined as “concealed trap for a victim.”  A snare leads to eventual destruction.  Sometimes people, businesses, and organizations, yes even the church, unintentionally create snares.  A credit card makes buying easy, but the snare is debt.  A church can dedicate a building, piece of church furniture, or a picture and it becomes an immovable object or sacred cow.  A person praying for a good paying job can become so dedicated to that job that he or she forsakes their ministry, and eventually church.  That boat or motor home becomes something that we worship, spending more time with it than with God.  We did not intent to worship it, but we did. 

Take Gideon in the Book of Judges.  He never intended to create a snare, but he did.

 

And Gideon said unto them, I will not rule over you, neither shall my son rule over you: the Lord shall rule over you.  And Gideon said unto them, I would desire a request of you, that ye would give me every man the earrings of his prey. (For they had golden earrings, because they were Ishmaelites.)  And they answered, We will willingly give them. And they spread a garment, and did cast therein every man the earrings of his prey. And the weight of the golden earrings that he requested was a thousand and seven hundred shekels of gold; beside ornaments, and collars, and purple raiment that was on the kings of Midian, and beside the chains that were about their camels' necks.  And Gideon made an ephod thereof, and put it in his city, even in Ophrah: and all Israel went thither a whoring after it: which thing became a snare unto Gideon, and to his house (Judges 8:23-27 KJV).

 

The Hebrew word for snare means “a noose for catching animals or a hook for the nose.”  The ephod, because of its wealth and beauty became an object of worship.  Its original intent was to honor God, but people are prone to idolatry. 

Is There Carpet in Heaven?

Several years ago, when I was working as a substitute mail carrier, I got called into the Post Master’s Office.  Through the years, I have been “called on the carpet” on many occasions for various reasons.  You might say I have plenty of “on the carpet” experience from high school, college, work, and yes, even church.

In this particular situation, I was working midnights at the cement plant burning the cement kilns.  I had worked off midnights on a Saturday morning, showered at the plant, ate breakfast at Hardees, and arrived at Montevallo Post Office early.  I thought about quitting the cement plant and working for the postal service since I was a bi-vocational pastor.  Postal work would be straight days instead of rotate shifts.

When I got to the post office, I put up the mail, pulled it down, and delivered it.  That afternoon I went home slept until time to work midnight and pulled another shift.

As we all know, there are folks that know more about your business than you do.  Well, the post office Miss Busy Body informed the Post Master that I had worked the previous Saturday without a good night’s rest and was unfit to deliver the mail.

On the carpet, the Post Master informed me that I needed a good night’s sleep before I delivered the mail.  He reiterated that the mail was a precious commodity that must be delivered with the utmost accuracy and extra care as I traveled the rural roads of Shelby County.  He notified me that if I did not correct the error of my way that he would discharge me.

When I finally got the opportunity to reply, I let the Post Master know a thing or two.  I asked him, “How much sleep did you get night last night, and what time did you get up yesterday morning?”  He responded that he had gotten up at six, went to bed at eleven, and rose this morning at six.

I told him that I had more rest than he had.  I said I went to bed at eleven in the morning, slept until nine, went to work at ten thirty, got off at six fifteen, reported to work at seven thirty, returned home around three in the afternoon, and slept until time to return to midnight shift.  I reminded him that his day was from six in the morning until eleven that night, which is seventeen hours before rest.  The Saturday I worked my time starting at nine thirty and ended at three thirty the next day which was fifteen hours.

I continued to tell him that Miss Busy Body’s son, also a rural carrier substitute, bragged to me how he did not get home until four in the morning and reported to work at seven thirty and if I was not mistaken, that’s only three and half hours.

I told him that each day that the cement plant entrusted me with two cement kilns that costs of millions of dollars, used thousands of tons of coal, produced millions of tons of cement, and I didn’t believe the mail I carried cost that much.  I told him that I understood responsibility and took many safety classes that stressed the importance of rest and work.  I worked sixteen hour shifts and many occasions at the cement plant.   I worked every other Saturday delivering the mail and worked seven consecutive days burning the kilns.  Did I say he had a sheepish look on his face?

At some point in each of our lives, people trust us.  I remember the first time dad let me drive in town.  He had an injury to his hand and he needed to go to Bessemer for a part.  We loaded into a 1958 Chevy and dad said, “You drive.”  I was scared to dead, but I knew daddy trusted me enough to drive and I was not going to let him down.

Years later, I needed someone to drive my car home from Chilton County ninety-eight miles to Gallion while I drove my old truck.  My son Aaron was thirteen.  I told him to drive the car, stay close behind me, and watch my taillights.  He had been driving enough around the Gallion community that I trusted him.  We drove slowly and safely an hour and half trip late at night and in heavy fog.

God did something amazing before the cement kilns and before mail delivery.  He in trusted me with the most important task of mankind.  He called me to share the Gospel.  It is ten simple words:  Jesus died for our sins and rose from the dead.  God is bringing the Lost to Jesus and I am part of the action.

 

But as we were allowed of God to be put in trust with the gospel, even so we speak; not as pleasing men, but God, which trieth our hearts (I Thessalonians 2:4 KJV).

 

I wonder if there is carpet in Heaven?