A wish and sigh for the new year.

What this letter is. A New-Year letter to a brother — "a wish and sigh for the new year" — that begins as counsel and slides, almost without seam, into prayer. Tersteegen's wish is that "the name Jesus be our blessing, our food and element in this now-begun new year." His theme is the nearness of God's love: "this opened, ever-moving, healing and saving sweet love of God" is "inwardly near to us, in and upon our heart," and he urges his friend to "turn ourselves to it the more," to "dwell only in this secure retreat," since "therein alone lies all our salvation." No human "power, art, or means," he insists, can "stem our deep corruption" or "bring forth any sound virtue in us" — only that divine love, "so unfathomably inclined to impart itself, at every moment, to each one of us." What grieves him is how often its "noble and precious stirrings" go "overheard by us, for want of still attentiveness": "I am ashamed when I think of it." At that confession the letter turns into direct address — "Forgive it, Thou untiring Love!" — and becomes a sustained prayer: "Thou art today still just as near as Thou wast yesterday; hold me, a poor man, and also Thy dear children… near to Thee in this year." He asks God to "still us… before Thee," to "set us in Thee, and flow through us, that we may bring forth much fruit that shall remain," so that everything — "eating, drinking, and whatever else we may do or speak" — "may be done in Thee." It ends reaching toward the last hour of all: that "especially in the hour of our death, we may be found nowhere else but in Thee, not having our own, but only Thy righteousness. Amen! Jesus!"

A few words and echoes.

• A New-Year sigh. Like Brief 36, this is a turn-of-the-year letter, but here the wish quickly deepens into penitence and prayer — the new year measured not by resolutions but by how near one will live to God's love.
• Today as near as yesterday. The consolation at the letter's hinge — "Thou art today still just as near as Thou wast yesterday" (set, in his own text, with the words today and yesterday stressed, rendered here in italics) — leans on Hebrews' "Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever" (Hebrews 13:8). God's nearness does not lapse with the calendar.
• Overheard stirrings. His diagnosis of the spiritual life: God's love is constantly "stirring," but we miss it "for want of still attentiveness" — the failure is not God's silence but our inattention.
• Fruit that shall remain. His prayer to be set in God and made fruitful — "much fruit that shall remain" — echoes Christ's word to the disciples, "that your fruit should remain" (John 15:16).
• Only Thy righteousness. The closing hope — to be found at death "not having our own, but only Thy righteousness" — takes up Paul's desire to be found in Christ, "not having mine own righteousness" (Philippians 3:9). The letter ends on the bare name, in emphatic capitals rendered as small capitals: "Jesus!"