The World is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon.

William Wordsworth, 1807

Alexander Bell invented the telephone in 1876. When Wordsworth wrote “The World is too Much With us” the world was inexpressibly less “with us” then than it is today: no phone, no television, no computers, no social media, no cars or airplanes; and yet Wordsworth saw “the World” as imposing so extensively into peoples’ spirits that they (we) had literally given their hearts away. Nature, to Wordsworth, being the greatest vehicle in life by which to reach a spiritual reality, was lost to us in the “getting and spending, when humanity “gave its heart away” to the world.

Little did Wordsworth know how much easier it would be to give away our hearts in modern times, when the “world” can invade our lives around the clock and we hardly notice.

From at least the time that love was a clear commandment from God: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength” (Deut. 6:5), to the time when Jesus made God’s love a tangible reality: “Lord, you know all things. You know that I love you.” (John 21:17) ,our “hearts” have been the focus of God’s relationship with us.

Jesus warned of the “Cares of the world and the deceitfulness of wealth” causing a separation from Him (Matt. 13:22), for the core of our being is in our “hearts”, which He has claimed from the very beginning. It doesn’t take modern technology to separate us from Christ. Wordsworth witnessed human hearts moving away from the love of God with little help from technology.

“Others, like seed sown on good soil, hear the word, accept it, and produce a crop—some thirty, some sixty, some a hundred times what was sown.” (Mark 4:8) .

However mysterious this crop may be, it is full of hope for everyone who hears and accepts. It’s the answer to the changing times and to our longing hearts. It is the very path God has put at our feet, and the fruit growing along the path is delicious.

Love in Him,

Prue