28 May | Youth
«Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.» Psalm 51:10
The human heart is an organ of the cardiovascular system whose main function is to ensure that blood is sent to all parts of the body. It is a hollow chamber made up of four cavities: two atria in the upper part and two ventricles in the lower part. It is approximately the size of a closed fist and weighs around three hundred grams.
Before we are born, our heart already beats strongly inside our chest. The heartbeat of a two- month-old fetus, for example, reaches 175 beats per minute, while the heart of an adult has an average heart rate of approximately 70 beats per minute.
If we do a quick calculation, we will discover that the human heart beats about 104,000 times a day, 38 million times a year and something around 2.5 billion in a lifetime. It pumps 85 grams of blood with each beat, which is equivalent to more than 9,000 liters per day. This means that the heart of an 80-year-old person has already pumped around 259 million liters of blood. What an extraordinary organ!
In recent studies, researchers have discovered something fantastic about the interaction between the mind and body. Doing physical activity, for example, causes an increase in heart rate, but the mere thought of physical exercise can also increase the heart rate. These fluctuations in heart rate are synchronized between people experiencing the same cognitive activity.
French researchers evaluated this phenomenon with people who listened to an audiobook by Jules Verne, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. And again, the results demonstrated that the volunteers' heartbeats were synchronous, even though there was no interaction between them.
As I read this research, I was thinking about what happens when we read the Bible and talk to God through prayer. Our heartbeats even match the Father's heart. In this choir of pulsations, it is the Lord who sets the rhythm, the pulse. He is the spark that warms and brings movement and meaning to life (Ps 39:3). Today, ask the Lord to encourage and transform your heart. Thus, it will beat in the same rhythm as the heart of God.