Reengage in Profound and Personal Ways

Ray Ortlund post:  What do we know of this?

In The Epistle Dedicatory to James Durham’s Clavis Cantici of 1668, his wife Margaret describes personal communion with Christ in these terms:

“. . . those spiritually glorious interviews, holy courtings, most superlative but most sincere commending and cordial entertainings of each other, those mutual praisings and valuings of fellowship, those missings, lamentings, and bemoanings of the want thereof, those holy impatiencies to be without it, swelling to positive and peremptory determinations not to be satisfied nor comforted in any thing else, those diligent, painful and restless seekings after it till it be found and enjoyed, on the one hand; and those sweet and easy yieldings to importunity and gracious grantings of it, on the other; with those high delightings, solacings, complacencies and acquiescings in and heartsome embracings of one another’s fellowship . . . O what will he make of his church when sinless and in heaven, when he makes so much of her when sinful and on earth!  And how incomprehensibly glorious must he be in himself, that he puts such passing glory on her!  These transports of admiration at one another, . . . and finally these vehement joint-longings to have the marriage consummated and the fellowship immediate, full, and never any more to be interrupted.”

Years ago I would have thought that was soft-headed.  I was wrong.  Personal communion with Christ is real.  It is the whole point of being a Christian.  It is what the Bible is for.  It is our endless future.

What do we know of this, as Durham describes it so astonishingly?  The Puritans, among others, knew a lot about it.  They experienced it.  They pursued it.  Have we graduated to a spiritual level above them, such that we can smile condescendingly?  Or is it we who have drifted from the sacred center and need to repent and come back and reengage with our Lord in profound and very, very personal ways?