Each Sunday I read a bit of Samuel Rutherford’s letters. I’ve been doing this for over a year and am just over halfway done. The man was prolific in his letter writing. The two letters I read last Sunday morning were intriguing in the seemingly contrasting advice he gives to two of his friends. They were both written in 1637. He says to the first:

It is time, and high time, for you to think upon death and your accounts, and to remember what ye are, and where ye will be before the year of our Lord 1700. I hope ye are thinking upon this. Pull at your soul, and draw it aside from the company that it is with and round, and whisper into it news of eternity, death, judgment, heaven, and hell.

I don’t know about you, but I have never had a friend write to me and exhort that I think more on my own death. These words from Rutherford seem very strange to our modern ears. The messages of 2026, especially in the new year, are all about denying and defying our own death. But if this life is just a shadow of things to come and our true home is in heaven, shouldn’t we think more about our death and what (and Who!) awaits us in eternity? Some of you may have had a loved one die in 2025. My mother died in August. I thought she had more time. None of us knows how much time we have.

The next letter focuses on Christ’s love and how little we know of it. Rutherford describes his longings like a lover whose only desire is to be closer to his beloved. He knows there are depths beyond his imagination. So he advises his friend:

However matters go, it is our happiness to win new ground daily in Christ’s love, and to purchase a new piece of it daily, and to add conquest to conquest, till our Lord Jesus and we be so near each other, that Satan shall not draw a straw or a thread betwixt us.

To one friend he says to think upon death and eternity. To another he says to strive daily in knowing more of Christ’s love. These two may seem to be at odds, but upon further reflection I see the complementarity. Rutherford’s striving to know more of Christ’s love is impeded by this world and his own sin. It is blocked because he is not yet in Christ’s presence. He has not yet found ultimate rest in his true eternal dwelling place. So to win more of Christ’s love daily is actually a way of preparing us for our death. Drinking more deeply of the sweetness of Christ now will help us turn away from the “dead waters” that the world offers and prepare us for the feast to come when all will be a “banquet of aged wine.” (see Isaiah 25:6) We are closer now in 2026 than we were at this time last year. As you look down the corridor of another new year, place eternity and the consummation of Christ’s love before your eyes. See how it changes your priorities.