Pretty Small Stuff

“Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.” — Matthew 5:5 (KJV)

Want a description of the human race? Tozer says take the Beatitudes, Jesus' list of who is blessed, and turn them inside out. “Instead of poverty of spirit we find the rankest kind of pride; instead of mourners we find pleasure seekers; instead of meekness, arrogance.” Instead of peacemakers, people “quarrelsome and resentful.” And it makes us miserable. “Pride, arrogance, resentfulness, evil imaginings, malice, greed: these are the sources of more human pain than all the diseases that ever afflicted mortal flesh.”

Jesus wasn't guessing. “He is not offering an opinion; Jesus never uttered opinions. He never guessed; He knew, and He knows.”

Jesus explained what “meek” meant later in Matthew: “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart.” The burden Jesus means, Tozer says, is inside us. And rest is not another thing to achieve: “It is not something we do, it is what comes to us when we cease to do.”

The first burden is pride. “Think for yourself whether much of your sorrow has not arisen from someone speaking slightingly of you.” Tozer describes people “smarting under each fancied slight, tossing sleepless if another is preferred before them.”

The meek person handles it with humour, talking to himself like this: “Oh, so you have been overlooked? They have placed someone else before you? They have whispered that you are pretty small stuff after all? And now you feel hurt because the world is saying about you the very things you have been saying about yourself?” And then: “Come on, humble yourself, and cease to care what men think.”

Meekness is not weakness. “The meek man is not a human mouse afflicted with a sense of his own inferiority.” He may be “as bold as a lion and as strong as Samson.” He knows he is weak on his own, but he also knows that “he is in the sight of God of more importance than angels.” Tozer gives him a motto: “In himself, nothing; in God, everything.” So he stops defending himself. “He will be happy to let God defend him.”

The second burden is pretending. “The fear of being found out gnaws like rodents within their hearts.” The rich man fears his clothes or his car will look cheap next to someone else's. Advertising, he says, plays “continually upon this desire to appear what we are not.” Little children, by contrast, “do not compare; they receive direct enjoyment from what they have.” Comparison comes later, and so does envy.

Jesus offers rest from all of it, “the blessed relief which comes when we accept ourselves for what we are and cease to pretend.” And we don't carry it alone. “He calls it 'my yoke,' and He walks at one end while we walk at the other.” Tozer's prayer is short and childlike:

“Lord, make me childlike. Deliver me from the urge to compete with another for place or prestige or position. I would be simple and artless as a little child. Deliver me from pose and pretense. Forgive me for thinking of myself. Help me to forget myself and find my true peace in beholding Thee. That Thou mayest answer this prayer I humble myself before Thee. Lay upon me Thy easy yoke of self-forgetfulness that through it I may find rest. Amen.”

You probably know these burdens well. Not being picked. Being left out of the group chat. Seeing everyone else's best moments on your screen and quietly ranking yourself against them. Editing how you look before anyone sees you. That's exhausting, and you were never meant to carry it. Meekness doesn't mean hating yourself; it means you matter so much to God that you can stop needing everyone else to agree.

One thing to do this week: the next time you feel overlooked or left out, try Tozer's trick: answer yourself with a bit of kind humour, then tell God, You can defend me. I'm putting this down. And for one week, post or send nothing whose main purpose is to make you look better than you are.