"God has given glory for you, but also you for it"

Here is a letter from a woman who truly understood the sovereignty and goodness of God in the midst of her trial. Her husband, the great Puritan preacher, Christopher Love, was falsely accused and sentenced to death. His wife wrote this letter to him just before his scheduled execution.

July 14, 1651

Dear Christopher,

Before I write a word further, I beg you to think that this is not your wife now writing, rather a friend. I hope you have freely given up your wife and children to God, who has said in Jeremiah 49:11 -- "Leave your fatherless children. I will preserve them alive, and let your widow trust in Me." Your Maker will be my husband and a father to your children. Oh that the Lord would keep you from having one troubled thought about your family. I desire to freely give you up to the Father’s hands and not only to look upon it as a crown of glory for you to die for Christ but as an honor for me that I should have a husband to leave for Christ. I dare not speak to you nor have a thought within my own heart about my unspeakable loss but I wholly keep my eye fixed on your inexpressible and inconceivable gain. You are leaving children, brothers and sisters to go to the Lord Jesus, your Eldest Brother. You leave your friends on the earth to go to the enjoyment of saints and angels and spirits of just men made perfect in glory. You leave earth for heaven and exchange a prison for a palace. And if earthly affections should begin to arise I hope that a spirit of grace that is within you will quell them quickly, knowing that all things here are but dross in comparison of those things that are above. I know you will keep your eye fixed on the hope of glory which makes your feet trample on the loss of earth. My dear, I know God has given glory for you, but also you for it. But I am persuaded that He will sweeten the way for you to come to the enjoyment of it. When you are putting on your clothes tomorrow morning, oh, think I am now putting on my wedding garments to go be with my everlasting Redeemer. And when the messenger of death comes to take you from prison to take you to the block, let him not seem dreadful to you, but look to him as a messenger that brings you tidings of eternal life. And when you climb the scaffold, think, as you told me you would, that you’re climbing aboard the fiery chariot to carry you up to your Father’s house. And when you lay down your precious head to receive your Father’s stroke, remember what you said to me: "Though my head shall be severed from my body yet at that moment my soul will be united with my Head, the Lord Jesus, in heaven. And though it might seem something better that I am leaving this life sooner than we had wanted, let us consider, Christopher, that this decree is the decree and the will of our heavenly Father and it will not be long before we shall enjoy one another in heaven again. Let us comfort one another in these things; be comforted my dear heart. It is but a little stroke and you shall be there where the weary shall be at rest and where the wicked shall cease from troubling us. Remember that you may eat dinner with bitter herbs but you shall have a sweet supper with Christ that night. My dear, by what I write I do not intend to teach you, for these comforts I received from the Lord by you teaching me. I will write you no more nor ever trouble you further but commit you to the arms of God with whom you and I will be forever. Farewell, my dear. I shall never see your face until we both behold the face of the Lord Jesus at that great day.