Lubb-dup, lubb-dup, lubb-dup, lubb-dup, lubb-dup, lubb-dup.
I am a pump. 1 am all muscle. I am Joe’s heart. I am the center of his whole body; from me are all the issues of life. A pump? Yes, I pump blood (about ten pints) through Joe’s body several times a day. I am the size of his fist, located behind his breast bone, protected from injury by it and his ribs. I contain no fat, no bones, just muscle – pure muscle.
I have four chambers which fill and empty rhythmically controlled by valves called mitral. tricuspid and semilunar. The last mentioned is half-moon shaped as you may have guessed. The right-hand side chamber sends blood to the lungs before the left chamber can speed it through the body. In that short interval that blood flows over and among moist air sacs which expand and contract leaving carbon dioxide behind and pick up a fresh supply of oxygen.
This pumping process is accomplished by the contracting and relaxing of my muscles which Joe calls heart teats. When his doctor listens to me with his stethoscope he hears, “lubb- dup”. The “lubb” sound is that of my tricuspid and mitral vales closing; the higher-pitched and more snappy sound of “dup” is caused by the half-moon valve snapping shut which controls the flow of blood into the aorta. This lubb-dupping business is an automatic process lasting some seventy to ninety years unless it is stopped by accident, heart attack or surgical shock. The rate of this beating is about seventy times a minute in my sixteen year old host: it accelerates in speed when he gets angry, frightened or excited. Under violent exercise 1 have been known to beat two hundred times a minute! The seventy speed, which is now normal, was a normal ninety when Joe was seven years old, and one hundred twenty when he was little infant.
But Joe doesn’t even think about his heart beat for he is a healthy teenager. He might wonder once in a while how come it keeps right on beating on and on. I am the one muscle in his body that never tires because I have my own supply-line of fresh oxygen. 1 just keep right on a beating! He has been told that an electrical impulse flows over me from my tip down over my whole being. Does he wonder how this electricity is generated? Is he concerned how it is regulated to its seventy-p.m. speed? Is he worried that I will not speed up when he needs more fuel for his other muscles? Joe doesn’t bother his head about such questions.
Do you remember when Joe’s foot related how he steered his steps into the pastor’s study and that this was a turning point in Joe’s life? Now he knows that he was “fearfully and wonderfully made”. Joe agrees with the Psalmist that his Creator “saw his substance, yet being unperfect” and in His Book “his members were written which in continuance were formed when as yet there were none of them”. So Joe’s concern regarding the how and why of the electrically stimulated heart beat is minimal. He is confident that it is an in-created phenomenon. That is good enough for my Joe!
Joe had taken his pastor’s advice and begun his personal meditations in the study of the first eight chapters of the Bible, with a change-of-pace in reading a chapter of Solomon’s Proverbs before retiring for the night. He had learned that his physical heart has a counter-part in his spiritual heart. One hundred twenty years for the flood, God said that all the imagination of the thought of man’s heart was evil continually. And the very next verse speaks of God’s heart which was grieved by man’s wickedness. From the instruction in the catechism class Joe learned that the “heart” so often mentioned in the Bible in connection with good and evil was the spiritual fountain of the issues of man’s moral life. Later, in an evening service Joe heard a sermon on Jesus’ quote from Isaiah, “This people draweth near to me with their mouth, and honoreth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me”.
Can you imagine Joe’s physical heart, so cozily tucked behind his breast, working in opposition to his mouth and lips? No sir! It is impossible that I do anything but send life blood to all parts of Joe’s body impartially. But it is easy to believe that a spiritual heart can be so rebellious for it is a sinful heart. Satan tempted Eve, and Adam’s subsequent fall caused a hardening process in their spiritual hearts while their physical hearts kept on beating faithfully for another nine hundred thirty years!
In his study of the Book of Proverbs Joe learned that it is possible for his heart to lust after the beauty of an evil woman; that a proud heart can stir up strife. When Joe turned to the Gospels he found Jesus saying that people commit adultery in their hearts; and in the twenty-fourth chapter of Matthew the summation was given by Jesus, “A good man out of the treasure of his good heart bringeth forth good things; and an evil man out of the treasure of his evil heart bringeth forth evil things.”
Joe’s spiritual life is given direction each Sunday morning when, after the reading of the law, the minister calls attention to the Lord’s words: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy mind”. As Joe and his fellow believers strive to obey the First and Great Commandment they find it easier to obey the Second Commandment to love their neighbor as themselves.
Did you realize that while you were reading this your own heart beat approximately seven hundred times? Lubb-dup, lubb-dup, lubb-dup, lubb-dup, lubb-dup, lubb-dup, lubb-dup.