Meditations

Learning from the Master, Number 3. Learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. Matthew 11, 29. Dear God, You are both gentle and lowly, because lowliness, humility, is the source of true gentleness. Pride is always haughty, impatient, ready to become bitter. But people who in good faith make light of themselves, are willing to be made light of by others. People who believe that nothing is owed to them, never believe they are being mistreated. Acting according to our nature, we cannot produce true gentleness. We can only produce lifelessness, indifference, or artful deception. To be gentle toward another person, we have to let go of ourselves. And then, dear Lord, You add, gentle and lowly in heart. Lowliness is not putting ourselves down only in our minds. Humility comes through a heartfelt desire. Our wills consent to it, and grow to love it, so we may glorify God. It comes through taking pleasure in seeing our wretched condition, bringing ourselves low before God, so that we may owe our healing to Him alone. Merely to see how wretched we are, and to fall into despair over what we see, is not being humble. On the contrary, to do that is to have a fit of pride, that cannot consent to being brought low. Finally, dear Savior, You promise me that in humility I will find rest for my soul. Alas, how far astray I have gone from that kind of peace! I have searched for it in foolish and turbulent passions, and in the vain imaginations of my pride. But pride cannot coexist with peace. Pride always wants what it cannot have. It always wants to pass itself off as something it is not. It constantly rears its head, and constantly God resists it. He brings our pride low through the envy or contradiction of other people, or through our own faults that we cannot help being aware of. Cursed pride, you will never enjoy the peace of God's children, who are simple and small in their own eyes.