A New Heart

My heart goes out to my friend’s daughter, Kaylee, who has suffered so much in her short life. I’m praying for her heart—and longing for the new heart all of us need!

On Feb. 14, 2011, after nine months of patiently growing inside her mother’s womb, little Kaylee was ready to see the world for the very first time. She was welcomed by a loving mother, a doting father and two older sisters who had been waiting anxiously to meet her. It was an idyllic scene.

After being checked out by the doctors, Kaylee was free to go home with her family. She was a happy baby girl who was warmly and lovingly cared for.

Something was seriously wrong

However, after being home for a few days, she became lethargic, her skin became bluish, and her breath was rapid and short. Kaylee could not communicate it, but something was seriously wrong.

Worried and fearful, her parents rushed their baby to the hospital for testing. The tests quickly revealed a problem. Kaylee’s heart had not developed fully on the left side, causing the blood to flow very slowly.

The medical community calls it hypoplastic left heart syndrome, a congenital defect with no known cause. It is a potentially fatal condition and sadly one that claims the lives of many children like Kaylee. The only cure for the condition is a series of intensive surgeries that, if successful, allow the child to a live a fairly normal life but, if unsuccessful, mean the child must receive a new heart. For infants, healthy donor hearts are hard to come by.

Waiting for a new heart

As I pray for and think about little Kaylee, I consider how her situation mirrors the tragic condition faced by the whole human race.

Stop and think about the joy there must have been in God’s heart as He welcomed His new creations Adam and Eve into the world. Here were two human beings that He had fashioned lovingly with His own hands and had breathed life into. Yet in such a short period of time, Adam and Eve became fatally ill due to the condition God calls sin.

We often think about consoling the afflicted, but do we ever consider the heartache of God? For who can console the Creator, the Author of life?

We human beings certainly cannot, for we are the ones on life support, the ones undergoing a series of surgeries to repair what is blemished within us. Even with the wonderful knowledge of repentance and baptism, we are on life support like Kaylee, who lies heavily sedated and tied to machines.

We as human beings are a race waiting for a new heart.

How anxious do you think God must be for us, His creation, to have a new heart, to be healed fully and to be as we were intended to be?

“For I will take you from among the nations, gather you out of all countries, and bring you into your own land. Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh” (Ezekiel 36:24-26, italics added).

God will wipe away every tear

When will this happen? When the Kingdom of God comes to the earth (see The Mystery of the Kingdom) and God offers new hearts to all of us. Eventually everyone alive will have been transformed to become immortal children of God. Then, “God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away” (Revelation 21:4).

For Kaylee—for all of us waiting for a new heart—may that day come quickly.

Jeremy Hess and his wife, Melody, attend the Cincinnati/Dayton, Ohio, congregation of the Church of God, a Worldwide Association.