Trials and sufferings are marks of our election.

What this letter is. A brief, affectionate note that turns a hard truth into an encouragement. Its burden is in the title: trials and sufferings are marks of our election, not signs that God has abandoned us but the opposite. “Let us fear no trials or sufferings, but accept them from the Lord as marks of our election.” The reasoning is clear-eyed: “the treasure of the essential presence of God in us is far too precious and high to be given us without trials, or kept without a cross.” And he defuses the fear by naming what is at stake: “nothing is touched but our own life,” the self that must die anyway, so it may as well “be given over, in the name of Jesus, to judgment and death.” The note opens with a promise of a visit and of his prayers, sparked by a text he had opened for the brother, “Fear them not,” and ends where so many of these letters end, on God as the single object of the heart: “He alone shall be the One whom I mean… Amen, for you and for me!”

A few words and echoes.

• Marks of our election (Kennzeichen unserer Erwählung). 2 Peter 1:10 (“make your calling and election sure”) and Romans 8:29–30 — suffering read not as rejection but as the seal of being chosen; cf. Philippians 1:28–29 (“unto you it is given… also to suffer”).
• I open the text at Joshua 10:8. Tersteegen’s practice of aufschlagen — opening the Bible for a word of guidance. Joshua 10:8 is God’s word to Joshua before battle: “Fear them not: for I have delivered them into thine hand” — a promise of victory over the “trials” that follow.
• Which the Lord will seal and fulfill. 2 Corinthians 1:20 (“all the promises of God in him are yea, and… Amen”) and 2 Timothy 2:19 (“the foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal”) — the promise made sure and brought to pass.
• The essential presence of God (die wesentliche Gegenwart GOttes). One of Tersteegen’s key phrases — God present in the ground of the soul not as an idea but in substance (“essentially”); the “treasure” that suffering guards rather than destroys.
• The gates of hell. Matthew 16:18 — against the surrendered, God-directed will, “the gates of hell shall not prevail.”
• The God-meaning will (der GOtt-meinende Wille). Again Tersteegen’s Gott-meinen (cf. Brief 51) — the will that intends, aims at, means God alone; this is what “the Lord takes into Himself with infinite good pleasure.”