Brent Shepherd > Recent Status Updates

In folded hands, all pious and fleshly zeal is quelled. Still runs the season in which there creeps upon us, the dread question, “Lord, is it I?” Have not I on many a night, sowed poisonous seed in many a heart and become a stumbling block to many? Let him who stands take heed lest he fall; and above all let him not judge when he sees others fall, but reach out for his brother with compassionate hands.

But to hear and hold on to the Word and budget one’s life upon it, this is the great test. And this means to count on it and reckon with it, simply to take seriously the fact that Jesus can break our chains and that therefore we do not need to go on staring with horrible fascination at these chains.

So he came, because of love, in great stillness, and you can hear and see him only if you hold your own heart completely still. If you are afraid of the stillness, then you must necessarily miss hearing him altogether.

What a wretched thing it is to call oneself a Christian and yet be a stranger and a grumbling servant in the Father’s house. And what a glorious thing it is to become aware every day anew of the miracle that there is Someone who hears us. Someone who is waiting for us.

He is not merely imagining a picture of an alleged Heaven that is open to sinners; in him the kingdom is actually in the midst of us. Is he not the very voice of the Father’s heart that overtakes us in the far country and tells us that incredibly joyful news, “You can come home. Come home!”? The ultimate secret of the story is this: There is a homecoming for us all because there is a home.