This
exposure of the dross in our lives causes us to mourn. This mourning of our
sinful, drossy lives would be hopeless except that the gospel of Jesus Christ
brings us to meekness instead of miserableness. The poverty and the mourning
are to crush our pride, but not our hope.
After
all, these are the sweet, and precious, and loving words of Jesus speaking to
us. Although Jesus’ words tell us of our sin, tell us of our wickedness, tell
us that we are not the good children we think we are, that we are not seeking
after God the way we imagine, the sound of his voice telling us of our sinful
condition denies hopelessness any ground to take root in our hearts.
Instead,
his voice exposing our poverty of spirit, and leading us to mourn the drossy
sin in our hearts, brings us to meekly rest in the admission that there is not
one thing we can do to fix what we have messed up. We cannot clean what we have
dirtied. We cannot deny the sin the gospel has brought into the light.
But
neither can we become discouraged. We cannot feel despair while it is the voice
of Jesus that is telling us of our sin. Just listen to his voice. It is the
Shepherd’s voice calling to the little lamb in the thickets. The little lamb
hears this voice and feels its poverty, its guilt and shame for wandering off
from the loving Shepherd. The little lamb hears the wondrous voice of his
Shepherd and mourns the thicket, and all the self-centered thoughts and acts
that led him into such a tangled mess.
The
little lamb finds his heart responding to the voice of the Shepherd with
settled resignation that his hope has arrived. He can peacefully resign his
will to the hopelessness of untangling himself. He rests in his tangled mess,
spent and weary, unable to give anything to his own rescue, but still hearing
the voice of his Shepherd assuring him that the greatest of all helps is on the
way. He has no need to struggle against the brambles and thorns because his
Shepherd is close, on his way, calling him, finding him. His Shepherd will not
need him to help, but calls him to rest, to meekly rest in the Shepherd’s
ability to save lost sheep.
Then
the little lamb finds a completely contrary longing rising up within him. The
struggle to free himself is gone. The thought of self-rescue has been
demolished. Untangling his own life from the mess of his sin is as hopeless as
any hopelessness can be. He suddenly finds that “in hope he believed against hope” [1] because his hope had run away from himself and into the arms of his
Shepherd.
Now,
his heart followed the path his hope had traveled ahead of him, and felt
overwhelmed with a hunger and thirst for the arms of his Shepherd rescuing him from
his brambly predicament. The hopeless desperation of trying to untangle his
woolly fleece from innumerable thorny branches was replaced by the hope-filled
hunger for his Shepherd’s help.
The
cry of the little lamb is no longer the angry muttering of one determined to
convince himself that he can do this impossible thing if he just believes hard
enough. Gone is the desperate bleating of one who has no hope that he has been
heard. In place of the vain hope and the disillusioned hopelessness is the
settled confidence that rescue is on its way, imminent, the certain dawn
following the rising morning star.
Therefore,
the cry of arrogant, senseless hope, and the baaing of hopeless desperation,
give way to the greater bleating of hope-filled hunger. The promise of a
satisfied soul makes the little lamb cry the more earnestly for the very thing
he now knows is his. The fact that he hears the Shepherd’s voice has settled
everything. The thickets and thorns, the brambles and prickly branches, will be
no match for the Good Shepherd.
And
so, with one more cry of hungry hope the little lamb presents his confident
request to the voice of his Shepherd, and waits in expectation.[2]
© 2012 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, Canada, V1K
1B8 ~ in2freedom@gmail.com
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