Encouragement to trust and to the love of God.

What this letter is. The hundredth letter of Theil II — and the 250th of the whole collection — is a short, warm word of encouragement to a young mother, gathering up two of Tersteegen's steadiest themes: the sheer gratuitousness of God's love, and the trust that answers it. It is framed as a blessing, and unusually the blessing reaches past the sister to her newborn: "May the Lord also bless and baptize the fruit of your body… that it may remain offered and sanctified to Him." (The phrase "the fruit of your body" is Elizabeth's word to Mary — "blessed is the fruit of thy womb" — a small, apt grace-note for a mother.)

From there Tersteegen preaches the free love of God with characteristic tenderness: "He loves us for nothing, and wills that we repay love with love." The sister is passing through the ordinary paradox of the awakened life — outwardly narrowed while inwardly drawn: "the Lord hedges up and cuts off for you the ways from without, but at the same time draws you inwardly with motherly love." (The maternal image of God, which recurs across these late letters, is especially fitting in a letter to a new mother.) The wonder that carries the whole is the gratuity of it all — "what a mercy, that the Father so loves us, being what we are" — and the only fitting response is unreserved trust: "let us trust such a God infinitely, and deny His most rightful love-demands nothing."

The letter's most moving turn is its calm glance past death. Tersteegen, chronically ill in this period, writes almost lightly of it: "Should you, or I, soon come to die, then we will appoint to meet one another in the bosom of God; I bear a humble trust to find you there eternally." It is the same move he makes to dissolve physical distance in other letters — an appointment to meet "in the heart of Jesus" — here extended across the boundary of death itself. He closes on the very words of Jude, which he cites by chapter and verse, and then, with a homely touch, asks her to "greet, in particular, your husband."

A few words and echoes.

• "The fruit of your body." Luke 1:42, "Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb" — Elizabeth's greeting to Mary, borrowed to bless the sister's child.
• "Praised be God, for He is good." Psalm 106:1; 118:1; 136:1, "O give thanks unto the Lord; for he is good" — the standard note of praise, joined to the free-grace claim that follows.
• "He loves us for nothing… repay love with love." 1 John 4:19, "We love him, because he first loved us" — love is always response, never initiative, on our side.
• "The Lord hedges up and cuts off… the ways from without." Hosea 2:6, "I will hedge up thy way with thorns… that she shall not find her paths" — in Hosea a discipline that turns the wandering wife back to her husband; here, the loving constriction that turns the soul inward to God.
• "Motherly love… draws you in, carries you." The maternal God-image (Isaiah 66:12–13, "as one whom his mother comforteth"; Isaiah 46:3–4, "borne by me from the belly") — grace as a mother's drawing and carrying.
• "What a mercy, that the Father so loves us, being what we are." Romans 5:8, "God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" — love that does not wait for us to be lovable.
• "That He may form, use, and possess us." The potter-and-clay surrender (Jeremiah 18:6; Isaiah 64:8) recast as consent: we deny His "love-demands" nothing.
• "We will appoint to meet in the bosom of God." The "bosom of God" recalls "Abraham's bosom" (Luke 16:22) and the Son "in the bosom of the Father" (John 1:18) — the place of rest where friends, parted by death, are reunited.
• "Keep yourself in the love of God… Jude, verse 21." Tersteegen's closing citation, quoted almost exactly: Jude 21, "Keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life."