One of the amazing feats of our modern medical establishment involves transplanting organs from one person to another. The first successful heart transplant took place in 1967. Today surgeons perform around 5,000 heart transplants every year. Include all organ transplants (kidney, liver, lungs and pancreas) and the list approaches 50,000. We live in a favored age.

God spoke to the people of Israel and urged them to undergo a transplant. Having pursued other gods, even to the point of burning their children alive as sacrifices, these Hebrews possessed hearts clogged with evil and massed with the scar tissue of self-indulgence. For years they flipped the Lord their middle finger. Yet God invited them back.

Rid yourselves of all the offenses you have committed, and get a new heart and a new spirit. Why will you die, people of Israel? For I take no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Sovereign Lord. Repent and live!

The Lord urged his people to return to him again and again. God takes no joy in the demise of anyone. He wants all to turn to him in repentance. Despite their heinous acts, the Lord extended the invitation to turn and find life.

It’s never too late. Even the worst of us (and we all fit into that category at one time or another) can humbly approach the Lord and receive a new spirit and a new heart.

Ezekiel 18:31-32

Photo by Bekky Bekks