Royal Insignia, The Low Door of the Cross

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Royal Insignia is a collection of 98 two-page readings on the subject of humility and is compiled by Edwin and Lillian Harvey. One of these readings is entitled “The low door of the cross,” and contains a poem written by Annie Johnson Flint who was barred from entering her chosen career as a concert pianist by crippling arthritis.

“Oh, straight and narrow is the door,
The little door of loss,
By which we enter in to Christ,
The low door of the Cross:
But when we put away our pride,
And in contrition come,
We find it is the only way
That leads to God and Home.

“Oh, strait and lowly are the doors
By which Christ comes to us;
We bar the entrance gates of joy,
And when He finds them thus,
By strange, small doors of woe and want,
Of trial and of pain,
He enters in to share our lives
To our eternal gain.

“The narrow doors He brings us to,
The little doors and low,
What large rooms they will open on,
If we will only go:
The strange, small doors of work and want,
Strait doors of grief and pain,
What riches they will lead us to!
What everlasting gain!” Royal Insignia, p. 78
In the next reading, “The Door of Destitution,” there is a quotation along the same lines by Oswald Chambers, taken from his book, He Shall Glorify Me:
“We learn to welcome the patience of Jesus only when we get to the point of human destitution. It is not that God will not do anything for us until we get there, but that He cannot. God can do nothing for me if I am sufficient for myself. When we come to the place of destitution spiritually we find the Lord waiting, and saying, ‘If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink.’ There are hundreds at the place of destitution and they don’t know what they want. If I have been obeying the command of Jesus to ‘go and make disciples’ I know what they want; they want Him. We are so interested in our own spiritual riches that souls are white unto harvest all around us and we don’t reap one for Him.
Some men enter the Kingdom of Heaven through crushing, tragic, overwhelming conviction of sin, but they are not the greatest number; the greatest number enter the Kingdom along this line of spiritual destitution—no power to lay hold of God, no power to do what I ought to do, utterly poverty-stricken.” Royal Insignia, p. 69.

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