In

December 1967, a team of doctors led by Christiaan Barnard of South

Africa performed the world’s first human heart transplant. The news

electrified people around the globe. Since then, countless lives have

been saved by heart-transplant operations.

When

the Bible talks about a person’s heart, though, it is usually not

referring to the organ that pumps blood through the body. For

thousands of years the heart has been a symbol of what we call our

soul, the center of our being, the seat of our thoughts and emotions,

what makes us “us.”

Still

today, in everyday conversation, if someone is merciless, we may say

they are “stony-hearted” or “hard-hearted.” So we know what

God was saying when he promised his people, through the prophet

Ezekiel, “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you;

I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of

flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you.”

This

is the new birth Jesus spoke about when he said, “No one can see

the kingdom of God unless they are born again” (John 3:3). We

receive new birth, new life, through the Spirit of God. Previously

our stony hearts were dead ­toward God, but when his Spirit fills

us with new life, we are revived and given a new heart of love for

God and all people.