Keep Thy Heart

The Ground

This proverb assumes something worth stating plainly: the heart is the source, not merely one factor among many, of the issues of life, everything that flows outward into actual choices, actual relationships, actual direction. Breaking up fallow ground that ignores the heart and focuses only on behavior addresses symptoms while leaving the actual source untouched.

Notice the instruction is not merely guard your heart passively, keeping bad things out, but keep it with all diligence, an active, ongoing, effortful task. This is not a one-time breaking that, once accomplished, never needs attention again. It is sustained, diligent tending, the kind fallow ground requires continually, not only in a single dramatic season.

This reframes what breaking up your ground is actually for. It is not merely a crisis response to a particularly hard season. It is meant to become an ongoing practice, diligent heart-keeping, that continues long after this particular fallow ground has been broken and planted, because the issues of life will keep flowing from whatever the heart actually is.

Whatever diligent heart-keeping looks like for you today, practice it as more than crisis management. This is not only for the hard seasons. It is the ongoing work beneath every season, fallow or fruitful, that this whole book is ultimately pointing toward.