The Heart's Deep Unknown

More tortuous than all else is the human heart,
beyond remedy; who can understand it?

Those words from Jeremiah caught my attention particularly today.  So many times I remember trying to understand the human heart and yet it seems impossible.  I like to think that my analytical capabilities suffice to explain it through the use of common sense and various psychological methods of analysis, but deep within I know they never can.  Somehow there remains something mysterious and unknown about our hearts.

As Chesterton put it: "The self is more distant than any star."

We never truly know ourselves.  Throughout life, as we learn to purify our motives and identify our desires, we come to know more and more of who we are.  Others help to cast light upon our true nature.  Yet something remains beyond our reach.

Jeremiah the prophet beautifully expressed that impossibility.  In an age of science and reason, it seems unthinkable that there should be anything we cannot know.  Yet in that lack of knowledge, there is a recognition of a deeper truth, if only we are humble enough to allow ourselves to see it.  If we do not blind ourselves, we know as Jeremiah went on, that there is only one who knows us intimately with all our flaws and imperfections and who yet sees us in the loving light of a father:

I, the LORD, alone probe the mind
and test the heart,
To reward everyone according to his ways, according to the merit of his deeds.