Friday 16 January 2015

Spurgeon's Sorrows

Zack Eswine has woven together C H Spurgeon's personal experience and words on depression to produce a sympathetic 'handwritten note of one who wishes you well', rather than 'an exhaustive word or prosaic treatise.' Here are some quotes:-

The Road to sorrow has been well trodden, it is the regular sheep track to heaven, and all the flock of God have had to pass along it.

Personally, I also bear witness that it has been to me, in seasons of great pain, superlatively comfortable to know that in every pang which racks his people the Lord Jesus has a fellow-feeling. We are not alone, for one like unto the Son of man walks the furnace with us.

It might puzzle us to tell why Elijah should get under a juniper bush, but when we get under the juniper ourselves, we are glad to recall the fact that Elijah once sat there.

I am certain that I have seen more in the dark than ever I saw in the light - more stars, most certainly - more things in heaven if fewer things on earth. The anvil, the fire, and the hammer, are the making of us; we do not get fashioned much by anything else.

There is much more here that is helpful for sufferers and caregivers. Some of it enters into general Christian experience; some of it reaches to the exceptional.
Newly published by Christian Focus Publications. £6.99 p/b.
Jeremy

No comments: