Tuesday June 23, 2009

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.

My shallow and ebb thoughts are not the compass Christ saileth by. I leave His ways to Himself, for they are far, far above me… There are windings and to’s and fro’s in His ways, which blind bodies like us cannot see.

I see grace groweth best in winter.

Faith is exceeding charitable, and believeth no evil of God.

If contentment were here, heaven were not heaven.

Send a heavy heart up to Christ, it shall be welcome.

The floods may swell and roar, but our ark shall swim above the waters;
 it cannot sink, because a Saviour is in it.

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Take no heavier lift of your children, than your Lord alloweth;
give them room beside your heart, but not in the yolk of your heart, where Christ should be;
for then they are your idols, not your bairns [children].
If your Lord take any of them home to His house before the storm come on, take it well,
the owner of the orchard may take down two or three apples off his own trees,
before midsummer, and ere they get the harvest sun;
and it would not be seemly that his servant, the the gardener, should chide him for it.
Let our Lord pluck His own fruit at any season He pleaseth;
they are not lost to you, they are laid up so well, as that they are coffered in heaven,
where our Lord’s best jewels lie.

She is not sent away, but only sent before, like unto a star,
which going out of your sight, doth not die and vanish, but shineth in another hemisphere:
ye see her not, yet she doth shine in another country.

Men do lop the branches off their trees round about, to the end they may grow up high and tall.
The Lord hath this way lopped your branch, in taking from you many children,
to the end ye should grow upward, like one of the Lord’s cedars.

Go on and faint not, something of yours is in heaven,
beside the flesh of your exalted Saviour, and ye go on after your own.