Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 104 · April 14
Heart, Soul, Mind
“Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.”
Jesus named three parts of you that belong to God. Which of the three have you quietly left out?
The question that brought out this list was not asked honestly. "Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying, Master, which is the great commandment in the law?" They wanted Him to say something narrow enough to attack. "Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind." He was quoting Deuteronomy, the words Israel was told to talk about when they lay down and when they rose up.
Heart comes first. In the Bible the heart is much wider than feelings. It is where a person decides, weighs, plans and intends. So loving God with all your heart is about what you have settled on, deep in the place where you settle things.
Soul comes second. The word covers the whole living self: your hunger, your breath, the very life you would lose if you lost it.
Mind comes third, and here it helps to read slowly. Deuteronomy says heart, soul and might. Matthew has heart, soul and mind. Mark gives four: heart, soul, mind and strength. The lists do not match, and they do not need to, because each one is a way of saying all of you, closing every way out one by one. Nobody was drawing a diagram of the parts of a person.
Then Jesus answers a question nobody asked Him: "And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself."
Give the mind its turn this week, since it is the one many of us skip. Spend twenty unhurried minutes learning something true about God that you did not know last week, and count it as obedience. The God who made your mind is glad to be loved with it.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 104 is The Protection of Habitation (Psalm 91:9-10).