“… learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart …”

— Matthew 11:29

The four Gospels present four rather different pictures of Christ from different perspectives, from different backgrounds, and through different events. As we read those Gospels, a character rises up from the pages, a character unique and altogether lovely. We begin to see a face and hear a voice, a voice that speaks with a music and a poetry never heard before. His message? “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest . . . learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart.”

Have you heard and responded to that message?

That voice has reverberated through the centuries. Ah, the skeptics have come with their scissors and their paste, cutting up the Gospels and pasting them back together anyway they’ve wanted. Still that character stands and speaks an everlasting message. The invitation still comes, the music still sounds. “Learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart.”

Antagonists have attempted to refute Jesus’ claims. Nietzsche condemned Christ, mocking His humility and dubbing Him a slave. Nietzsche died in a madhouse, but the voice of Christ still resounds. Hitler, following in Nietzsche’s footsteps, declared that he, as a pure pagan, would uproot Christianity from the earth. Hitler became a charred cinder, his name a byword for one who does evil. But the voice of Christ continues to resound throughout the world. The Communists tried to kill just about every Christian they could get their hands on. But today in those lands more people follow Jesus than follow Karl Marx.

So it goes that Christ, whose message has outlasted all his detractors, criticizes His critics and becomes the final Judge of all His judges, and all the while His voice still exhorts, even today, “Learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”

Today let that lasting message reverberate through your heart, encouraging you in all you do.

“Jesus shall reign where’er the sun
does his successive journeys run.”
Isaac Watts