What if the Tower of Babel was about... the Language of the Heart?

The Bible has weird stories.

You're wild or deluded if you think it doesn't.

So they all get together to make a tower that reaches up to heaven so they can "get to God,"

But that upsets God 'cause He's more of the "just beyond reach sort."

So, since He's God, He has to come up with a super clever plan to smack down the nonsense.

And in a stroke of cosmic genius He says, "Aha, I've got it! Confuse their languages!"

Real story or allegorical?

Who knows. It sounds far-fetched, but what if it doesn't matter? What if the lessons of this story lie... beneath the surface?

There's never been a morning that I've woken up and thought, "Heck, the world would sure be a better place if we could still read ancient Sumerian Hieroglyphics." And I just feel real sad about it for awhile.

But do you know what language we've lost that I mourn every day?

The language of the heart.

Oh, the depths.

It's this ache. A longing to show our love. To be known for who we really are. For our good intentions.

Ten of the best days of my life were the ones I spent in the psych ward. What immediately became apparent after meeting my cohorts was this: they were all desperately aching to show someone the love in their hearts.

Aching to the point of losing their sanity.

They also craved being loved, but infinitely more did they crave to show their love.

And to my surprise, they poured their love out on me like I had never experienced from a human in all my life. And it healed a deep, unnamed ache that evaded words.

The language of the heart.

What if this was what was lost at Babel?

What if this was a story of our origins--mythological, archetypical--whatever it may be, that continues to ring painfully true.

Our human condition. The weight of the ache in our hearts to show the depth of our love. To be named in our goodness, our desire to bring blessing into the world.

And oh the ache when we cause pain. When we are perceived wrong. When we lack the words to convey the deep longing to love that we feel within.

What if the path to heaven... in a sense... were to once again build a tower.

A tower of words. A castle of love. Giving language to the human heart, that all things might be restored.

What if this were the tower that reached to the heavens?