Note from the Editor

Psalm 51 by Veronica McDonald, oil on canvas.

Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;
wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow […]
Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and renew a right spirit within me. – Psalm 51: 7, 10 (ESV)

Most times as an adult, feeling pure and burdenless seems like an impossible thing. In fact, I would be so bold as to say it is impossible. As much as I wish we could, we can’t erase the mistakes we’ve made in the past, and we can’t remove images, songs, painful memories, movies, hurtful words, etc., implanted within the psyches of our broken minds. But, as God often reminds me, nothing is impossible with Him.¹ It sounds so cliché, but the truth and power of this statement are easy to overlook. How can anything be impossible for the eternal, omnipotent Being who created everything — from the universe, laws of physics, and objective morality, to my fingernails and the love I feel in my heart? This is the God who says He knit us together in our mothers’ wombs,² who says He can forgive us for our sins,³ who can purify us by making us be born again⁴ as new creatures with a clean slate.⁵ Not only that, He says He will give us Himself, to guide us, comfort us, and convict us, so that we never have to do this life alone.⁶ Could anything be impossible for God? (And before your mind starts wandering into logical impossibilities, like creating a square circle, stay with me on where I’m going here…). When we seek God, He reveals Himself to us, and when that happens, He fills every dark and broken place inside of us with His healing light, and he washes away the crimson stain on our souls. He makes us new. He takes away our burdens. And after He purifies us from all sin, He begins the sanctifying journey to make us more like Him. To roughly paraphrase Paul and Isaiah, God’s cleansing love calls us to walk in the newness of life: to be fully His, to be molded by Him, and to be used for His good purposes.⁷

This journey, this sanctifying walk, however, is a daily struggle. Oftentimes, it is a confrontation with the ugliness of our own sinful nature. It is a struggle against our own flesh and the temptations this world has to offer, that threaten to pull us back into the dirty muck that God beautifully washed us of, like dogs returning to their vomit. It’s a struggle against our own pasts, creeping up on us and accusing us of being a disgusting thing, one that can’t change, can’t be different, can’t start over. It’s doubt that feels like a painful rock in your shoe that you can’t kick away. There are parts of us, or maybe all parts of us, that need to die to follow Christ,⁸ and dying isn’t so easy. But when you die, when you let all the worldliness and fleshiness inside of you die, you are resurrected into a new life, the one you were always intended to live and the one that is but a foreshadowing of the joy and peace you will experience in eternity. The writers in this issue delve into these themes and so much more, creatively conveying the internal tension of living in this broken world and seeking to find or follow Christ, and allowing Him to change us.

In our 14th issue, you’ll find poems and stories of people in need of God’s purification, redemption, and healing — those who are reaching out to Him, and those who still haven’t taken that step of seeking His healing grace. You’ll find sin engulfing people like a dead weight, dragging them down into its depths. You’ll see prayers that haven’t been answered, families broken, and Death’s cold finger touching where it hurts most. But through all the darkness, there is always light, there is always God, and He shines through like a beacon calling us into His comforting arms.

I hope their writing speaks to you and awakens a desire in you to always seek God’s face, in every circumstance. He’s the One, the only One, who can purify us and make us whole.

Thank you to our wonderful contributors, for blessing Heart of Flesh with their craft and amazing talent. Thank you to Katie Yee, for all of her diligence and hard work and discernment in reading through submissions. Thank you to my sweet family for their encouragement and patience. And thank you, for reading.