Samuel Rutherford's Letters from Exile

In 1636, Scottish minister Samuel Rutherford was stripped of his pastorate and banished to the remote town of Aberdeen. The authorities intended exile as punishment, a way to silence the troublesome preacher. Instead, Rutherford picked up his pen.

From that cold, lonely outpost, he wrote over two hundred letters that burned with gratitude and adoration for Christ. "I am a prisoner of Christ," he told a friend, "and He has the key to my prison door." Rather than bitterness, his correspondence overflowed with thanks so extravagant that readers centuries later still marvel at them. He called his sufferings "Christ's sweet cross" and described his exile as a place where God drew nearer than ever before.

The authorities had banished Rutherford to obscurity. God used that obscurity to produce some of the most beloved devotional writing in the English language. What was meant to diminish him only deepened his praise.

Psalm 138 captures this same stubborn gratitude: "Though I walk in the midst of trouble, you preserve my life." David did not wait for circumstances to improve before giving thanks with his whole heart. He praised the Almighty before the powerful, confident that the Most High regards the lowly and will not forsake the work of His hands. Like Rutherford in Aberdeen, David discovered that when everything else is stripped away, what remains is the steadfast love of the Lord, and that is more than enough.