Guard Your Heart

I caught a pretty bad virus about a year ago. I was sick. What a hassle! What an inconvenience! It ended up taking me the better part of a week to get over it. I even had to spend $80.00 on a new hard drive, sit all day in my office reinstalling software… wait, I wasn’t specific about the virus was I! It was a computer virus! Sorry to mislead everyone, although at one point that week I think I would rather have had the physical virus. I am now a devout believer in virus protection software. Oh yes I had it before but I must confess that it wasn’t quite up-to-date. Now I am going to be vigilant about trying to keep up with every evil virus out there.
You know, all of this talk about viruses, protection, guarding my computer, and so on reminds me of one of my favorite Bible verses, Proverbs 4:23. It says, “Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.” Doesn’t this verse conjure up images of some sort of warfare or battle? That’s how I felt this week when I was dealing with my dead computer. It was war! I ended up being convinced (again) that I needed to protect my computer. Isn’t that similar to how we need to protect ourselves from what is evil “out there”? We need to be extra careful about what we put in our minds and hearts (and what is put into the minds and hearts of our children!).
A few years ago when I was a youth minister, our youth group decided to make this verse our theme for the school year. They put the verse into their own words and made it something worth adhering to: "Sin is toxic!" They wanted a constant reminder about what they needed to be focused on and reminded of what they needed to not let into their lives. Listen to words of this proverb in The Message: “Keep vigilant watch over your heart; that’s where life starts.” I guess it applies to computers too, but more powerfully to people. Stay vigilant!