“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” – Matthew 5:8
Søren Kierkegaard said “to be pure in heart means to want only one thing.” Like pure gold, all the impurities have been removed and what you have left is an undiluted, refined object of simple composition.
For human beings, the singular desire of a pure heart will be granted to those who have one. And what is it that will be granted? A vision of God. What more could the most purest of hearts desire? What is a more noble, pure, undefiled, and unpolluted desire than to simply behold Him?
One way to gauge the purity of your heart is to examine how you feel about this. Would you be content with merely seeing God? Does the thought of only beholding Him exhilarate you or bore you? Does setting your eyes upon the Lord seem like a fair trade for doing the self-crucifying work of purifying your heart? If not, then you have far to go.
But if so, then God will make good on His promise. Why? Because this is a statement of reality, not a command to obey and reap the rewards of. Jesus is just telling us the way things actually are—He’s describing to us how the world works: those who have pure hearts will see God, and they will be blessed, happy, satisfied.
You’ll see Him in the sunsets and the rain and the mountains, of course. But you’ll also see Him in the quiet, in the silence, in the solitude. You’ll see Him in your neighbor and your enemy. You’ll see Him in your occupation and your chores. You’ll see Him in your disappointments and your successes. Your pure heart will see God in all the places that others feel Him to be absent, and you will have your fill of Him.
This is how the world works. This is how God designed our hearts, and our eyes, to function. We have a Creator Who has imbued the entire world with His glory and has made the unveiling of it the reward for those who are courageous enough to strip their hearts of all competing vanities.
This is the reward for those who are up to the task. Do you think it’s worth fighting for, though?