Fri.-Sabbath, 9/1-3/17 Devotion

Wahoo—it is almost Sunday! We *get* to go back to church again! In order to help us get ready for worship, here is the great Puritan pastor Richard Sib-bes, from his "The Bruised Reed" book. . . .

"The sighs of a bruised heart carry in them a report, both of our affection to Christ, and of His care to us. The eyes of our souls cannot be towards Him unless He has cast a gracious look upon us first. The least love we have to Him is but a reflection of His love first shining upon us. As Christ did, in His example to us, whatever He charges us to do, so He suffered in His own Person whatever He calls us to suffer, so that He might the better learn to relieve and pity us in our sufferings. In His desertion in the garden and on the cross He was content to be without that unspeakable solace which the pre-sence of His Father gave, both to bear the wrath of the Lord for a time for us, and likewise to know the better how to comfort us in our greatest extremities.

"God sees fit that we should taste of that cup of which His Son drank so deep, that we might feel a little what sin is, and what His Son's love was. But our comfort is that Christ drank the dregs of the cup for us, and will comfort us, so that our spirits may not utterly fail under that little taste of His dis-pleasure which we may feel. He became not only a man but a curse, a man of sorrows, for us. He was broken that we should not be broken; He was troubled, that we should not be desperately troubled; He became a curse, that we should not be accursed. Whatever may be wished for in an all suffi-cient Comforter is all to be found in Christ."