The Change Is Essentially Of The Heart

The Change Is Essentially Of The Heart :

There’s a story of a great Italian sculptor, Benvenuto Cellini. Cellini was commissioned to do some work for the Catholic Pope. However, the Pope decided that he wouldn’t pay Cellini until he felt like it. And Cellini, being a very stubborn man, decided he wouldn’t work until he was paid. So the Pope decided to teach Cellini who was boss, and he had him put in a dungeon.

The dungeon was below ground level, with just one small window high above so that there was very little light. Besides being dark, it was also very damp, and his mattress was rotten. Rats scurried over the floor, and his only food was bread and water. He had only enough light to read by for one hour a day, and during that time he read his only book, the Bible. The rest of his time he spent in prayer.

In these circumstances, which most of us would think of as horrible, he gradually grew into a powerful sense of joy, so that when the Pope relented and released him, Cellini wrote a poem about his experience. And in the poem, he said that if you want to know what true joy is, then you must give up your worldly position and arrange to have yourself put into a dungeon.

Another man who was put in prison for his beliefs was Richard Wurmbrand, a preacher in Rumania who was put in prison by the communist regime. When he refused to give up his faith, he was tortured, and this went on for years.

At the height of the torture, he and his cell-mates felt as if they couldn’t take any more. They had been praying intensely all along, but they prayed once more, and more intensely than ever. And suddenly their cell was flooded with God’s light. They felt so much joy that they began singing to God and using their chains to beat the time as if with cymbals.

It was very interesting to observe that after years of torture, Richard Wurmbrand was stalwart, brave and joyful.

The circumstances are essentially neutral, and that it’s our reaction to them that makes the difference between joy and sorrow.

In this way, we see that what we really need to do is change ourselves. And yet, what is it in us that resists change? The change is essentially of the heart, and the resistance is of the heart also.

Om Namah Shivay.