Rotten Bones versus a Peaceful Heart

As I was reading in Proverbs the other day, I underlined Proverbs 14:30 and wrote out to the side: “Blog this”. Now, frankly I don’t remember why I thought that verse stood out more than any other of the Proverbs, but it is rich in thought and content. Consequently I am going to blog about it.

To save you the trouble of opening your Bible, I’ll write it out, as found in the Amplified Bible (which in this case is an excellent translation): “A calm and undisturbed mind and heart are the life and health of the body, but envy, jealousy, and wrath are like rottenness of the bones.”   Just as a bonus I give you the more traditional NIV: A heart at peace gives life to the body, but envy rots the bones.
OK, got it? I don’t need to say anything more do I? Probably not, but can’t resist the temptation to use some more words. Sometimes I feel like when I read a verse it makes about as much sense as the “word cloud” to the right of this paragraph. I love word clouds, as they take a group of words and simply arrange them artistically. Nice design, but where’s the sense?

So let’s look at the words and understand that when it says a heart at peace, it’s not referring to an absence of conflict. It’s talking about wholeness, about health. Typically this word is used when God “restores” his people after a time of sin and punishment.  So the peace is a right relationship with God. And heart is not our emotional life, but rather our very being, our inner man. It is that which makes us, us – our will, our mind, our appetites, our emotions. So the verse is saying that when we are totally focused on God, when our relationship to him is at the very center of our being, then…

Then what?  Well, then we will have LIFE.  Then we will be fully alive. We will be whole. On the other hand, if we are “off-center”, then what’s going on with us?

What’s going on is that our passions (envy, jealousy, rivalry, our desires and ambitions) will take over. And those things will NOT give us life. In fact, they “rot” our bones. By rotting our bones, he simply means that it spoils us, ruins us, makes us sick, eats away at us. You don’t need a doctor to tell you, that those who are dominated by their own desires (eat too much, drink too much, exercises too much,worries too much, stresses too much, works too much. etc.), are out of control and the body pays a high price.

Yeah, Paul was right. We must learn to make Christ the focus of our lives. Then we learn, like Paul did, the secret of “being content in any and every circumstance.” (paraphrase of Philippians 4:12).   Nice touch being able to relate Proverbs to Philippians, don’t you think?

Here’s to healthy bones and peaceful hearts!