from the epilogue
Gentle and Lowly
A good friend sent this reminder to a group of us today, from my favorite book of 2020, Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers.
…there is one thing for us to do. Jesus says it in Matthew 11:28.
“Come to me.”
Why do we not do this? Goodwin tells us. It’s the whole point of our study of Jesus:
That which keeps men off is, that they know not Christ’s mind and heart…The truth is, he is more glad of us than we can be of him. The father of the prodigal was the forwarder of the two to that joyful meeting. Have you a mind? He that came down from heaven, as himself says in the text, to die for you, will meet you more than halfway, as the prodigal’s father is said to do…O therefore come in unto him. If you knew his heart, you would.
Go to him. All that means is, open yourself up to him. Let him love you. The Christian life boils down to two steps:
Go to Jesus.
See #1.
Whatever is crumbling all around you in your life, wherever you feel stuck, this remains, un-deflectable: his heart for you, the real you, is gentle and lowly. So go to him. That place in your life where you feel most defeated, he is there; he lives there, right there, and his heart for you, not on the other side of it but in that darkness, is gentle and lowly.
Your anguish is his home. Go to him.
“If you knew his heart, you would.”
(Dane Ortlund, Gentle and Lowly, p 215-216)
