My spirit had trembled when Jesus called out the names of the unrepentant towns, the names of those who had not turned back to God even after seeing the miracles He performed. We had seen His works. Time after time, the sick, the blind and the lame and those who were possessed by foul spirits, cried out with joy when he delivered them from their pain. But the woe he called on those cities came from the depths of his heart.
Jesus Prays
Then we stood before Him as he looked up to heaven, praying aloud to His Father.
‘I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and Earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants’.
A child cried and a mother lifted him up to her face. A well-dressed man shook the dust from his robes, turned and walked away, as a sick girl lifted up her arms from her stretcher. It seemed to me then that the real sickness around us was not the sickness of those poor broken bodies but the sickness of sin.
The worst sin on display was the sin of the proud. Those people who thought themselves ‘wise and intelligent,’ but used their gifts only to extort and cheat others. They took from the poor what little they had and threw it carelessly into the pot. These were the people who the prophets had always called out, like the idle rich ‘fat cattle’ who appalled Amos, and the wealthy man in Nathan’s story, who had taken the little ewe lamb from the poor man’s bosom.
I Will Give You Rest
It was the poor men and women, the lame and blind who ran to Him and saw who Jesus was. They were as humble and innocent as children, his ‘infants,’ who looked into His eyes with the honest gaze of love. The poor man, the orphan and the widow, these gazed at Jesus and saw the Truth, saw the merciful Father in the eyes of the Son. These it was who looked on him and, on their brothers, and sisters with the eyes of mercy, as they labored under the load of their oppressors.
He turned his gaze back from the Heavenly Father to the crowds, to the little ones who looked at him with longing-love as they struggled on with bleeding feet and sore limbs. He paused to scan the whole crowd, seeing every pain, every sorrow and loss before lifting his arms out to them, as though he could hold each person in His embrace. A sigh passed through the crowd as He spoke gently to every person there and each one heard the words in his or her heart:
“Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
