Required reading
The Letters of Samuel Rutherford (Available from Amazon or free here) - Read Letters 8 to 12.
My summary
Today we read letters to
(i) Kenmure;
(ii) M'Naught;
(iii) Culross;
(iv) Cunningham.
The subjects of the letters include:
(i) comfort in the loss of a spouse;
(ii) Rutherford's banishment;
(iii) Rutherford's regrets.
What grabbed me
I continue to enjoy reading Rutherford's words of comfort for the grieving: 'So oft as I call to mind the comforts that I myself, a poor friendless stranger, received from your Ladyship here in a strange part of the country, when my Lord took from me the delight of mine eyes (Ezek. xxiv. 16), as the Word speaketh (which wound is not yet fully healed and cured), I trust your Lord shall remember that, and give you comfort now at such a time as this, wherein your dearest Lord hath made you a widow, that ye may be a free woman for Christ, who is now suiting for marriage-love of you. And therefore, since you lie alone in your bed, let Christ be as a bundle of myrrh, to sleep and lie all the night betwixt your breasts (Cant. i. 13), and then your bed is better filled than before. And seeing, amongst all crosses spoken of in our Lord's Word, this giveth you a particular right to make God your Husband (which was not so yours while your husband was alive), read God's mercy out of this visitation ; albeit I must out of some experience say, the mourning for the husband of your youth be, by God's own mouth, the heaviest worldly sorrow (Joel i. 8). And though this be the weightiest burden that ever lay upon your back ; yet ye know (when the fields are emptied and your husband now asleep in the Lord), if ye shall wait upon Him who hideth His face for a while, that it lieth upon God's honour and truth to fill the field, and to be a Husband to the widow. See and consider then what ye have lost, and how little it is.'
Even when they've lost someone close to them, a Christian is never truly alone.
Next week's reading
Read Letters 13 to 17.
Now it's your turn
Please post your own notes and thoughts in the comments section below.
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