The Life Hid with Christ in God

Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. MATTHEW 11:28

Hannah Whitall Smith’s movement went by many names. The Methodists spoke of the second blessing, others of the higher Christian life, and she herself preferred the plain phrase the life of faith. But the name she reached for when she wanted to describe it at its best was Paul’s: the life hid with Christ in God. In The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life she defines it with a picture rather than a formula, and the picture has outlived nearly everything else she wrote.

For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. COLOSSIANS 3:3

The man in the wagon

A man is toiling along a road with a heavy load on his back. A wagon comes by, and the driver kindly offers him a lift. He climbs up gratefully and sits down — and keeps the load on his shoulders. When the driver asks why he does not put it down, he answers that it is almost too much to ask to be carried himself; he could not think of letting the driver carry his burden too.

The story is funny, and it is meant to be. Its point is that most Christians have climbed into the wagon. They have trusted Christ with their eternal future, and they know they cannot keep their own souls. But they have kept the burdens of this life on their own backs: the health, the children, the business, the reputation, the future, the habits they cannot break. They sit in the wagon and sweat.

Cast thy burden upon the LORD, and he shall sustain thee: he shall never suffer the righteous to be moved. PSALM 55:22

The first burden to lay down, she says, is not our circumstances but ourselves. “The greatest burden we have to carry in life is self.” Our moods, our temperaments, our temptations, our peculiar faults — these weigh more than any outward trouble, because they come with us everywhere. So the first act of the hidden life is to hand oneself over: here, Lord, is this self I have tried and failed to manage; You made it, You understand it, You take charge of it. Then everything else follows, down to the servants and the house.

Taking the burden and leaving it

She tells of a woman worn down by a heavy trouble who picked up a tract about an old woman who had endured great sorrow. Asked how she bore it all, the old woman said she did not bear it; the Lord bore it for her. Most people, she added, take their burdens to the Lord and then bring them back again. She took hers and left them. When the worry returned, she took it back to Him, as often as it took, until it stayed.

Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you. 1 PETER 5:7

There is nothing mystical in this. It is the difference between saying a prayer about something and actually letting go of it. Hannah did not claim that the feeling of anxiety vanished for ever the first time. She taught a habit: to hand the thing over, and when it creeps back, to hand it over again, without scolding oneself, until the handing over becomes the natural movement of the soul.

The child in the Father’s house

Her second picture is the one Jesus Himself chose.

And said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. MATTHEW 18:3

A little child, she says, provides nothing for himself and yet receives everything. He does not lie awake over tomorrow’s dinner or next year’s clothes. He runs in and out of his father’s house as though it were his own, because it is. Plague and famine may be spoken of in the streets, but under his father’s care he is at peace. She sums it up: “This life of faith, then, about which I am writing, consists in this: being a child in the Father’s house.”

Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. MATTHEW 6:34

She adds a picture of bedtime. After a long day, how good it is to lie down and let the bed hold us up, relaxing every muscle. But suppose we did not trust the bed and lay rigid all night in case it gave way — we would rise more tired than if we had never gone to bed at all. That, she says, is how many Christians rest in God: lying in His arms with every muscle clenched.

What the hidden life is not

It needs saying, because Hannah’s pictures can be misread, that the life hid with Christ is not carelessness. The child in her illustration is thoughtless about his own provision, not about his father’s wishes; he is free because he is under authority. A Christian who hands his business over to God still opens the shop in the morning. A mother who hands her children over to God still feeds them and teaches them. The burden laid down is the anxious weight of ultimate responsibility, not the ordinary work of love. Hannah herself was an energetic reformer, a hardworking mother and a busy correspondent. She never imagined that rest in God meant lying in bed.

Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. PHILIPPIANS 4:6–7

Nor is it an escape from trouble. Paul’s word is that our life is hid — not that our troubles are. The Christian in the wagon still travels the same rough road. What changes is who carries the weight. The old woman in the tract had endured great sorrow; she was not spared it, she was carried through it.

A rest that remains

The honest reader will ask whether this is realistic. Hannah would answer that it is the only realistic thing, because the alternative — managing an unmanageable self and an uncontrollable world by our own anxiety — has never worked for anyone. She had tried it for years. It did not make her holier; it only made her tired.

There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God. For he that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his. HEBREWS 4:9–10

The rest she offered is not the rest of doing nothing but of ceasing from a particular kind of work: the work of being our own saviour, our own sanctifier and our own providence. That work belongs to God. When we give it back to Him, we find, often to our surprise, that we have more strength for the work that is really ours.

Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee. ISAIAH 26:3

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Name the burden you are carrying in the wagon. Say out loud to God that you are handing it over.

2. When the worry returns this week, do not scold yourself. Simply hand it over again, as often as it takes, and note how many times.

3. Begin with yourself: tell God plainly which part of your own temperament you have failed to manage, and ask Him to take charge of it.

4. Distinguish your duties from your burdens. Write down one thing you must still do and one weight you must stop carrying.

5. Tonight, as you lie down, use the bed as a lesson: let it hold you, and let God hold the day.

A PRAYER

Lord Jesus, I have climbed into Your wagon and kept my burden on my back.

I give You the weight I cannot carry — this self of mine, with its moods and faults and fears.

I give You the people and the things I have been anxiously managing, and I leave them with You.

When I take them back, as I will, be patient with me and teach me to lay them down again, until I rest like a child in my Father’s house. Amen.