Psalm 51:10
 Create in me a clean heart, O God...

What a great prayer to pray. A clean heart is so needed. When the heart is clean, thoughts are unpolluted, love is pure, and conscience is clear. All that cleanness produces relationships that last. The best thing about a clean heart is that it causes eyes to see God. "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. (Matt 5)

You know what I mean! We are not talking about the muscle that beats in a chest or corneas for vision. We are talking about our lives being connected to Christ in awesome life-giving ways. We are talking about closeness to source of life and love.

The saddest thing in the world is that few pray this simple prayer. We tend to not see God as creator. We most naturally don't see our hearts has being dirty and God as the only One who can create a clean one for us. We love to think of ourselves as creative. And basically good at heart. Certainly we can have creative ideas. And we can do some pretty loving things. But the truth is...there is a clean heart that is so awesome and so fantastically wonderful that only God can create it. We can't. But he can - and he does - because he wants to - "I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh." (Ezekiel 36:26)

Dirty, guilty, unloved, horribly disappointed? Tried to fix the problem, only to make it worse? David can identify. He was the one who prayed this prayer after carrying out his crazy plans which he thought would thrill his heart.

Clean hearts don't evolve over time through will power. They are created. By God, through Christ.