LEARNING HOW TO LEARN
LEARNING HOW TO LEARN
Christ wins our hearts in His humiliation, but we begin our acquaintance with Him now in resurrection. If I begin by possessing Him in glory, I enjoy in a peculiar way all that I discover of Him in His humiliation. It is in resurrection that I learn the One I am united to, otherwise my heart may be drawn out in devotion and admiration, but, like the bride in Canticles, I have no abiding certainty.
[p. 502] In the gospel narrative the Bridegroom wins the heart; but it is in resurrection that He makes known to me - as Adam says to Eve - “This is now bone of my bones” (Genesis 2: 23); only Adam and Christ could use that language - in no other case does the wife partake of the actual material of the husband. Read Ephesians in connection with the Lord’s words to Mary Magdalene, and you will see how the “God” and “Father” comes out, and also “my brethren”. Souls are often occupied with their affection to Christ as down here, without being conscious of being linked to Him in glory by the Spirit; there you are free to learn and to adopt all of Him in spiritual power, and apart from the old man which was crucified in the cross, and you are in a region where there could be nothing to hinder the disclosure of the Bridegroom’s love expressed in His humiliation. When He sends to the distant Syria to seek His bride, all that could interfere with His love has been set aside in the cross.
I think it is possible to be occupied with the lesson - like a schoolboy with his Greek - worried, trying to learn, instead of reaching the end of the learning. It is said we go to school to learn how to learn. I think one may spend one’s time in trying to understand one’s lesson instead of by faith reaching the end of all lessons. Paul was occupied with the thorn; but the advance he arrived at was to take pleasure in infirmities! This is very different from praying three times. Did you ever feel, after you had spoken two or three times to the Lord about a matter, that you must not allude to it again - you must await His time? Paul was taught the reason for the thorn - exercise is necessary - but I fear at times that souls lose ground in trying to discover their own need of the trial, instead of accepting the lesson as having one distinct end; that is, to cast them entirely on the Lord. Thus they would reach the good of it without perhaps being able to say what was their distinct need. A medicine has cured you,
[p. 503] though you did not know what was the matter with you. The medicine met and removed the indisposition, and you are cured. The doctor knew!