I’m Back!

After a 3-1/2 week bout of pneumonia, I have sufficiently recovered to the point where I can resume blogging.  I still feel fairly weak, and still get winded easily, but here I am.

I see grace groweth best in winter. – Letter: Samuel Rutherford to Lady Culross (December 30, 1636)

 

A Comforting Word

You have lost a child – nay, she is not lost to you who is found in Christ.  She is not sent away, but only sent before, like unto a star which, going out of our sight, doth not die and vanish, but shineth in another hemisphere.  You see her not, yet she doth shine in another country.  If her glass was but a short hour*, what she wanteth of time, she hath gotten of eternity, and you have to rejoice that you now have someone flourishing up in heaven. – Samuel Rutherford (1600-1661), in a letter to Lady Kenmure (dated January 15, 1629), on the death of her infant daughter.  (This excerpt has been edited slightly for clarity.)

*That is, if the hour-glass of her life had but only a little sand in it.

 

A Very Simple Observation

Christ should be our night song and our morning song.

From: The Loveliness of Christ: Extracts from the Letters of Samuel Rutherford, edited by Ellen S. Lister; reprint (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 2007 [1909]), p. 75.

 

Banishment Not a Separation from God

I have heard a rumour of the prelate’s purpose to banish me, but let it come, if God so will; the other side of the sea is my Father’s ground as well as this side.

Samuel Rutherford (1600-1661), from The Loveliness of Christ: Extracts from the Letters of Samuel Rutherford selected by Ellen S. Lister; reprint (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 2007), p. 47.  Originally published – London: Samuel Bagster & Sons, 1909.