The benefit of sufferings. God's love-drawing to inward detachment.
The Eleventh Letter.
The benefit of sufferings. God's love-drawing to inward detachment.
In the grace of Jesus, dearly beloved sister!
Ah, how good it is to take up our little sufferings in love, just as they are given us out of love! If we had the mind of the saints, how our sufferings would gladden us! And if we cannot yet do this, still we should give ourselves up, in quiet self-abandonment, like children, to the cleansing workings of grace, which generally lie within, beneath such outward sufferings. The outward suffering is, as it were, the smoke; inwardly is the fire of refining. God wills to melt us down, and we are to suffer and consent, and look on innocently at what His loving hands are doing with us.
This is the Lord's purpose: to make us ever barer — detached from all that is outward, sensory, rational, and our own — that our whole being may remain turned and devoted to Him alone, in an inward childlike spirit, where He will impart Himself to us alone, and content us in our very being. One word that proceeds from God's mouth would make us full and blessed. How gladly would He speak nothing but peace with us, if He could but once get us alone and apart, out of the tumult! And it is precisely through such visitations, and other inward workings of grace, that the Lord would lure us and lead us into the wilderness of inward detachment, and there speak kindly to our hearts, as He promises through the prophet. As, then, the Lord drives from without through chastisements, so may He also draw, in the ground, through the tender stirrings of His love — that we may at last become inward heart-children, after His good pleasure! Jesus strengthen and bless you, dear sister, together with your husband and daughter! Amen!
German
Der elfte Brief.
Nutzen der Leiden. GOttes Liebeszug zur inneren Abgeschiedenheit.
In der Gnade JEsu vielgeliebte Schwester!
Ach wie so gut ist's, die kleinen Leiden in Liebe annehmen, gleichwie sie uns aus Liebe gegeben werden! Hätten wir den Sinn der Heiligen, wie würden uns unsere Leiden erfreuen!
— Opening lines of the original German. The complete transcription of all 605 letters appears in the forthcoming Encounter Press critical edition; Brief 1 is shown in full as a sample.
German text: public domain (1773–75 first edition / 1845 Gesammelte Schriften).
Translator’s notes
What this letter is. A short letter of consolation on suffering, written to a married sister (Tersteegen greets "your husband and daughter"). Its heart is a change of eyes: "how good it is to take up our little sufferings in love, just as they are given us out of love." If we had "the mind of the saints," he says, our very sufferings "would gladden us"; and if we cannot rise to that yet, we can at least give ourselves up "in quiet self-abandonment, like children," to the hidden work grace is doing beneath the trouble. His image is a furnace: "the outward suffering is, as it were, the smoke; inwardly is the fire of refining" — "God wills to melt us down, and we are to suffer and consent, and look on innocently at what his loving hands are doing." God's whole purpose in it is to make us "ever barer," detached from everything outward and self-owned, so that our whole being turns to him alone. He would gladly "speak nothing but peace with us," Tersteegen says, "if he could but once get us alone and apart, out of the tumult" — and it is exactly through such trials that he "lures" us "into the wilderness of inward detachment," there to "speak kindly to our hearts," as the prophet promised.
A few words and echoes.
- Given in love, taken in love. The letter's opening turn: sufferings are "given us out of love," and the art is to "take them up in love" — meeting God's love with trust rather than resistance.
- Smoke and fire. His picture of trial: the outward pain is only the smoke; the real thing is an inward "fire of refining," God melting away the dross as a refiner purifies silver.
- God wills to melt us. His counsel is not stoic endurance but consent — "to suffer and consent, and look on innocently" at what "his loving hands" are doing.
- Into the wilderness. His tenderest echo, from the prophet Hosea: God "allures" the soul "into the wilderness" of inward detachment precisely so he may "speak comfortably" — kindly — to her heart, alone and away from "the tumult."
- Drawn in the ground. Two ways God works: "from without through chastisements," and "in the ground" of the soul "through the tender stirrings of his love" — the Father's drawing — until we become "inward heart-children."
trans. Jarred Fenlason · gerhardtersteegen.com/letters/bdi-thi-011 · all rights reservedEnglish translation © Jarred Fenlason · All rights reserved · gerhardtersteegen.com.