A beautiful thought from Mrs. Maiel in her book: "The Emptier the Heaviest" says: "The more a heart is empty, the more it weighs. "It should be the opposite: "The emptier, the lightest." But it's not.

Let's think about a heart without love, or without hope, or joy, or without an ideal or someone. Emptier than a balloon: this at least has gas inside, the other has nothing. Inside it there's a vacuum. This emptiness weighs inside so much! Life becomes a burden exactly because of no substance. For lack of content.

How about a heart without God? In this case, the heart is a desert. Without a landscape. Loneliness. Desolation. Silence.

That's why God asks us that we give Him our hearts. "My son, give me your heart." ( Proverbs 23:26 ) But what is a heart?

In common language, heart means the sensibility, feeling, affection passion. In the Bible, it is more than that: it is the man seen from the inside. In his inner, spiritual life. It is the sum of all his capabilities, his intelligence, affections, willingness and conscience. Intellectual, affective and moral lives.

This is what God wants from man: man himself. Not what he has but what he is because by having the man God will end up having what the man has. "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with your all mind", says the gospel. ( Matthews 22:37 ).

To give God a tear, one merely tear, is too little, only one drop for him who is infinitely greater that the ocean. Religion is not only emotion, but total, absolute dedication from man to God. Only this way the heart becomes light when we give it the presence of God. God doesn't weighs you, He takes out the weight. The more we have God, the lighter our lives become. And how can I have this presence? Very simple, by me just opening the door of my heart to the Lord who is outside knocking. "Here I am! I stand at the door and knock." ( Revelations 3:20 ). He knocks because He wants to be welcomed, and not an intruder in that house. He wants to be pleasing and not undesirable.

As it often happens we give God only a room or two of the house and we keep the rest where we don't want God in. There we keep the things that would not look good in God's eyes. It may be a wrong situation, a bad intention or some flasks with "poisoning potions", such as hate, meanness, pride or vanity. God wants the heart as a whole: everything or nothing.

Pr. Rubens Lopes.