A Good Treasure

Luke 6:45 The good person out of the good treasure of the heart produces good, and the evil person out of evil treasure produces evil; for it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks. (NRSV)

Cardiovascular disease – essentially heart attacks and strokes – accounts for one third of all deaths. It’ll kill 51,000 people across the globe today, tomorrow, the next day and every day for the rest of the year.

And by and large CVD, as it’s called, is a by-product of the western lifestyle that’s taken over the world; the highly processed foods that we eat and to a lesser extent, our increasingly sedentary existence. And yet, at the beginning of the 20^th century, heart disease was almost unknown.

So, if we just replaced all those processed foods with fresh, whole foods – foods we can recognise like fruit, vegetables, meat and fish, rather than foods that come in a can, jar, box or packet – millions of lives would be saved.

Tragic, really. As is the other form of heart disease which has been destroying lives since Adam and Eve plucked a piece of fruit from that one forbidden tree in the garden. Jesus put it like this:

Luke 6:45 The good person out of the good treasure of the heart produces good, and the evil person out of evil treasure produces evil; for it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks. (NRSV)

So, what state is your heart in? Has your lifestyle perhaps replaced the goodness with which God would fill your heart, with the manufactured evil of the world and its ways? And what changes do you need to make, today to set things right? For … the good person out of the good treasure of their heart produces good, and the evil person out of evil treasure produces evil.

That’s God’s Word. Fresh … for you … today.