A hearty greeting and blessing-wish.

What this letter is. The shortest letter in this part of the collection, written the same day as the letter to the sick sister at Solingen — and we do not know who received it. The old editor printed it without a name, and nothing in it identifies her. What survives is a form: four lines of greeting, and then Tersteegen turns away from his correspondent and speaks about her to Christ for the rest of the page. It is a letter that becomes a prayer in the middle of a sentence, and the printer marked the turn by changing the type.

"I wish to make this greeting in the power of the name of Jesus, who is our only salvation. Amen, Jesus!" — and with that Amen the letter changes direction: "Be the dear sister greeted and blessed by Thyself, O Lord Jesus!" The name at that point is set from a larger fount than any other capital in the letter — the printer reached for a bigger sort for those four letters — which the small capitals here preserve. What he asks for her is precise and domestic: that grace would work upon her; that peace would fill her; that she would hold to her Shepherd "in these confused times"; that she would lie down in faith like "a poor weak sheep" in His bosom, forgetting "the world and all things foreign."

Then the image the whole prayer has been building toward: "so that Thou mayest find a still, swept lodging in her heart." The heart as a guest-room made ready — quiet, tidied, with nothing foreign left lying about — and she "dealing and walking with Thee alone in childlike simplicity, in the hidden place, as though she were alone with Thee in all the world." The close turns from petition to praise, and it is the gospel of these letters in one sentence: that poor children and sinners have been given the privilege of coming near "just as they are, so that Thou mayest form them after Thy own heart."

A few words and echoes.

• her good Shepherd… a poor weak sheep. John 10:11–14, and Isaiah 40:11 — "he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom."
• these confused times. The phrase is his own — no scripture behind it — and what he asks for is not deliverance from the confusion but singleness in it. (The draft glossed the confusion as the war; that was asserted without support and is withdrawn. The 1742 campaigns of the Austrian Succession were principally in Bohemia and Bavaria, and Tersteegen's verworrene Zeiten is at least as likely to mean the religious confusion of those years.)
• a still, swept lodging. Luke 2:7 behind it — no room in the inn — and Revelation 3:20, "I will come in to him, and will sup with him."
• in the hidden place. Matthew 6:6 — "pray to thy Father which is in secret."
• just as they are. Matthew 11:28 — "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden."
• form them after Thy own heart. Jeremiah 18:6 — "as the clay is in the potter's hand, so are ye in mine hand"; and 1 Samuel 13:14, "a man after his own heart."