REFLECTIONS

The Loveliness of Christ

“It is the Lord’s kindness that He will take the scum

off us in the fire. Who knoweth how needful winnowing

is to us, and what dross we must want ere we enter into

the kingdom of God? So narrow is the entry to heaven,

that our knots, our bunches and lumps of pride, and selflove,

and idol-love, and world-love must be hammered off

us, that we may throng in, stooping low, and creeping

through that narrow and thorny entry.

O, what owe I to the file, to the hammer, to the

furnace of my Lord Jesus!

Why should I start at the plough of my Lord, that

maketh deep furrows on my soul? I know He is no idle

husbandman, He purposeth a crop.

Crosses are proclaimed as common accidents to all

the saints, and in them standeth a part of our communion

with Christ.

How sweet a thing were it for us to learn to make

our burdens light by framing our hearts to the burden, and

making our Lord’s will a law.

It is not the sunny side of Christ that we must look

to, and we must not forsake Him for want of that; but must

set our face against what may befall us, in following on,

till He and we through the briers and bushes on the dry

ground. Our soft nature would be borne through the

troubles of this miserable life in Christ’s arms. And it is

His wisdom, who knoweth our mould, that His bairns go

wet-shod and cold-footed to heaven.

There is nothing but perfect garden-flowers in

heaven, and the best plenishing that is there is Christ.

It is not a smooth and easy way, neither will your

weather be fair and pleasant; but whosoever saw the

invisible God and the fair city, makes no reckoning of

losses or crosses. In ye must be, cost you what it will; stand

not for a price, and for all that ye have, to win the castle;

the rights of it are won to you, and it is disponed to you,

in your Lord Jesus’s Testament; and see what a fair legacy

your dying Friend, Christ, hath left you: and there wanteth

nothing but possession.

O! men’s souls have no wings, and therefore night

and day they keep their nest and are not acquaint with

Christ.

What can I say of Him?

Let us go and see.

I have little, little of Him; yet I long for more.”

-Samuel Rutherford  1600-1661  From The Loveliness of Christ  Published by Community Christian Ministries  Moscow, ID USA  Pages 10, 11.