Conduct amid the changeableness of one's state.

What this letter is. A short, steadying letter of direction, written 9 January 1733 to Else Otterbeck (who also receives Briefe 127 and 128). She has evidently written that her inward "state" feels unstable — up one day, down the next. Tersteegen neither dismisses this nor lets her dwell on it. Yes, he says, your state is changeable in part — but only "because you do not remain enough in the Unchangeable, and keep looking at that part of yourself which cannot but be subject to a thousand changes." The whole letter is about where to fix one's attention: not on the fluctuating feelings, but on the unchanging "ground" — the deep, God-ward center of the soul.

His practical advice is to make her own resolve into a prayer. She had ended her last letter with a renunciation — "I will have no creature-love, no world-love, no self-love" — and he tells her to keep saying it, but "to God, and from the heart." Better still, he gives her the positive form of the same thing: "Lord! I will have only Thee; only please Thee; and love Thee purely. My God, and all my good!" Say it, he urges, precisely "when the contrary would stir," when "distractions, temptations, darknesses" come. Then comes the image the letter is remembered for: "Stay by your ground, and though all the waves beat over your little ship, there is no danger." The storm may rage on the surface; the anchored soul is safe. He ends with a bracing rule against introspection and comparison — "Do not reflect, and do not think upon others! … do everything simply unto the Lord; if He is satisfied with you, what more would you?" — and a blessing: "He bless you!"

A few words and echoes.

• The Unchangeable. The letter's anchor — God, "with whom is no variableness" (James 1:17); the soul steadies itself not by managing its moods but by resting in Him.
• The "ground." Tersteegen's key term (Grund) for the deep, God-ward center of the soul, the soul's ground — one is to "walk according to" it, beneath the surface changes.
• "I will have no creature-love…" Else's own renunciation, quoted back to her — to be said not as a verdict on herself but as a prayer "to God, from the heart."
• "Lord! I will have only Thee." The positive prayer he gives her — the whole of religion in a breath; an echo of the psalmist: "Whom have I in heaven but thee? … God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever" (Psalm 73:25–26).
• "Though all the waves beat over your little ship." The letter's memorable image (an echo of the storm on the lake, Mark 4:37) — surface turmoil cannot harm the soul that stays by its ground; "there is no danger."
• Against introspection. The closing rule — "do not reflect, and do not think upon others"; endless self-examination and comparison only feed the instability; simplicity toward God cures it.