Samuel Rutherford's Palace in Exile

In 1636, Scottish pastor Samuel Rutherford was ripped from his beloved congregation in Anwoth and banished to Aberdeen by church authorities who despised his preaching. He lost his pulpit, his people, and his freedom to minister. By every outward measure, the exile should have broken him.

It did the opposite.

From that cold northern city, Rutherford poured out over two hundred letters that would become some of the most luminous devotional writing in Christian history. Stripped of everything familiar, he discovered that the one thing he truly needed had not been taken from him. He wrote to a friend, "My Lord Jesus is kinder than ever He was, and my chains are gilded with His love." He called his place of banishment a "palace" because Christ met him there with such overwhelming nearness.

Rutherford had stumbled into the very heart of Psalm 27. David did not ask the Lord for victory over enemies, restored wealth, or political power. He asked for one thing — to dwell in the presence of the Almighty, to gaze upon His beauty. When Rutherford lost access to his church building, he found that the dwelling place of God was not a structure at all. It was a relationship no exile could sever.

"The Lord is my light and my salvation — whom shall I fear?" David sang those words not from comfort but from trouble. Rutherford proved them not from a pulpit but from banishment. The shelter of the Most High travels with us.