True Love

Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. Matthew 11.29

All hail Jesus, the humble Carpenter. Look, here He comes, with healing under His wings (Malachi 4.2b), ready to set us free from every binding emotion and restrictive thought that imprisons us, inhibiting us from breathing the free air of heaven: He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed (Luke 4.18b).

We all have wounds. Rips in the cloth from which we have been cut by our Creator. Whether unknown, but operative, and affecting our behavior through indirect means, or impossible to ignore—toxic wounds that smoulder with pain, reject every type of earthly ointment and refuse to heal, no matter how many words of comfort, encouragement, affirmation and assurance we slosh onto them—Jesus, the sweet Savior and Healer of our hearts, holds the cure: He Himself took our infirmities and bore our sicknesses (Matthew 8.17b).

Christ takes our infirmities and sicknesses, and gives us His health and His strength. Christ takes our confusion and doubt, and gives us His clarity and His confidence. He takes our sense of worthlessness and gives us His dignity. He takes our shame and gives us His glory. He takes our death and gives us His life: I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live (John 11.28).

This is Jesus. This is our God. The sinless One who was crucified for our sin. The innocent Lamb slain from the foundation of the world (Revelation 13.8b). Christ purifies our desire to annihilate our bodies, minds and hearts, whether publicly or in secret, through never ending cycles of self-abusive behavior, and gives us the wings that we need, in order to fly high above the wreckage of our past into the freedom of the Spirit.

Utterly generous, Christ desires to flood us with every virtue, power, and priceless, heavenly gift that He possesses, in order that we can walk beside Him, as His friends (John 15.14) and His fellow workers (1 Corinthians 3.9): Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away. For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land (Song of Songs 2.11–12).

Christ wants to adorn us with the heavenly ornaments of mental purity, emotional stability and fully functioning boundaries. Boundaries that are as invisible and instinctive to us, as they are clear and inspiring to all those with whom we come into contact. Boundaries for which we feel zero guilt.

That Christ has resurrected from the dead, and in so doing, trampled down death by death, as the glorious Paschal troparion that the Church sings to venerate this holy event puts it, does not mean that the ability to fully comprehend the extent of the redemption that Christ has given us and consistently live it out in our every waking moment, is immediate. Similarly, the inner healing that accompanies this deftly delivered miracle of grace, can, and often does, take time.

That’s okay. Sanctification is a process. It is a process of falling apart and being completely reformed in Christ’s image: We all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord (2 Corinthians 3.18).

Let’s, therefore, look to Him. Jesus, the humble Carpenter, who comes to find us, as we stumble through the darkness of our painful lives, having nearly lost the thread of hope that leads us to Him and to life. He stands before us with His arms wide open. His heart is attuned to every murmur of our hearts. He is already aware of everything that distresses, torments, and afflicts us, and He is brimming with excitement to share with us, the heavenly treasures that He knows will set us—radically and eternally—free:

Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.

—Matthew 11.28–30.

Christ is risen! Truly He is risen!

Amen +

Author of You Are Mine and Apocalypse, Sister Anastasia writes on the role of the ancient, ascetic Church in a rapidly changing, modern world.

Photo by Fonsi Fernández on Unsplash