radically changed
His plans for His own life. He has made a plan for winning His world away
from its rebellion, its sin, back again to purity and close touch with
Himself. That plan centred around His Son, and He spared not His own Son,
but gave Him up.

And that emergency, and that plan of the Father's because of the
emergency, have affected our Lord Jesus' life on the earth. The whole plan
of His human life was radically revolutionized by it. The emergency, the
Father's plan, gripped Him. He turned away from the true, good, natural
life which it would have been proper for Him as a man to have lived, and
He lived another sort of life. It was an emergency life, a life fitted to
His Father's plan, and so the Father-pleasing life.

He became a homeless man, with all that that means. Would any man have
enjoyed home-life with all the rare home-joys, the sweetest of all natural
joys, so much as He? And then the larger circle of congenial friends, the
enjoyment of music, of exquisite art, the reverent study of the great
questions of life, of the wonders of nature whose powers it was given man
to study and cultivate and develop,[11]--it is surely no irreverence to
think of Him both enjoying and gracing such a life, for such was the
original plan of human life as thought out by a gracious Creator.

Instead, He had not where to lay His head, though so wearied with
ceaseless toil. He fairly burned His life out those few years, early and
late, ministering to the emergency-stricken crowds, healing their sick,
feeding their hunger, raising their dead, comforting broken hearts,
winning back sin-stained men and women, teaching the ignorant neglected
multitudes, preaching the Father's yearning love, searching out the
straying, ceaselessly travelling up and down, without leisure enough to
sleep or to eat oftentimes, and all this despite the efforts of His
kinsfolk to restrain His burning intensity.

This is what I mean by a Father-pleasing life. It was truly the
consecrated life, consecrated to His Father's emergency plan for His
world. It was the surrendered life, wholly given up to the one passionate
plan of His Father's broken heart for His earth family.

Now, His "Follow Me" does not mean imitation. It does not mean a restless,
aggressive hurrying here and there in meetings and Christian service. It
means that there will be a getting so close that the sweet fever of His
heart shall be caught by ours. The world-vision of His eye