We greet each other all the time with the all too familiar, "How are you?" or "How are you doing?"  Often it's just a polite phrase in passing.  Do we literally want to know how someone is...with all the details?  Or has it become a repetitive greeting that we give and truly don't expect a response?

I recently had the privilege of traveling with the Shalom Christian Academy seniors and advisors on their mission trip to Guatemala.  We spent 4 days living, by two's, with Ketchi families in the remote village of Sanimtaca...nestled in a picturesque bowl shaped valley surrounded by high mountains.  On the floor of the bowl lay the community buildings, church, school, etc. and from there trails lead up to the simple homes doting the steep mountain sides.

We did not know the Ketchi language, but immediately tried to learn a few phrases just to communicate with our host families.  I was struck by the translation of their greeting, "How are you?" "Ma sa sa la chol?" literally translated was "How is your heart?"  So every time they greeted one another, they were actually asking a question that went much deeper, in my mind, then "How are you".   I felt like I needed to examine my heart before I could answer that question. But of course I couldn't speak to them. How was I to communicate how my heart was?

Although we had very limited ability to know what our hosts in Sanimtaca were saying to us, we were able to feel their hearts through their actions. These people must have literally spent weeks preparing for our visit. They built new outhouses and private bathing enclosures outside their homes, and partitions for privacy and platforms for sleeping inside their homes. They gathered extra fire wood, shelled/ground more corn, killed their chickens, and collected or bought food for cooking.  In addition to all the preparation, they continually cared for us while we were with them.  Our host family was very attentive to our every need.  From carrying our gear up the steep trails, making walking sticks with sharp points, and keeping fresh boiled water and coffee for drinking on our bedside table, to scattering fresh pine needles on the hard packed dirt floors where we slept and fresh flowers on the stand, it seemed they thought of everything.  They would lead us where we needed to go each day and get us home each evening.  A warm basin of water with a dipper was prepared for our bath each evening.

By the 4^th day my heart was so overwhelmed by the hospitality  

and care of these people for me that I could hardly contain it.  How could I express what was in my heart when I couldn't speak words??  When my host family was kneeling in prayer at their family altar the morning of our departure, Mike and I quietly joined them.  As we prayed each in our own languages, the Spirit of the Lord was present and uniting us, and we ended up in each others arms, hugging and crying. (I was literally sobbing, my heart was so full of things I could not express.)  Our host father just clung to us. (He was still deeply grieving the death of his father.)  We were connecting heart to heart. We stood in each others arms for quite a while.  Who would have guessed that without language we could connect like this?  It all comes back to our hearts and of course the presence of God's Spirit knitting us together. My heart was running over without words, but I knew we were communicating.

The verse that came to me was in the last part of Luke 6:45, where Jesus is speaking about what kind of fruit a tree bears ...."For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks". If I listen to what is coming out of my mouth, it will give me an indication of what is in my heart.  Am I speaking words of life and truth to others, or am I speaking words of negativism, discord, pride, etc?  What fruit are people seeing?  It all goes back to what is in there to begin with......and I am helpless to change my heart.  But God is ready and waiting for me to bring my heart to Him through prayer, confession, and acknowledgement of my need for Him.  Ezekiel's prophecy from the Lord in 36:26 says, "I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh."  In the covenant God made with Israel God said He would put His laws in their minds and write them on their hearts. (Jer 31:33)  What a wonderful promise!!!  As I spend time in His presence and in the Word, endeavoring to keep my mind stayed on Him, I will find that my heart is being changed and that what is coming from my lips and the actions of my life, will be more and more like Jesus.

Change my heart O God; make it ever new. Change my heart O God; may I be like You.

How is your heart?

Grace Chace