A Grief Sanctified: Through Sorrow to Eternal Hope
Digital Verbum Edition
Overview
In his timeless memoir of his wife’s life and death, prolific author and Puritan theologian Richard Baxter describes a love story, not of fairy tales, but of faithfulness from beginning to end. After losing his wife of 19 years, Baxter sought consolation and relief in Scripture and writing. Within days, he produced a poignant lover’s tribute that has become a classic memoir.
In A Grief Sanctified, Packer has added his own astute reflections along with his edited version of Baxter’s memoir. Packer guides you through six of life’s realities — love, faith, death, grief, hope, and patience — comparing and contrasting the world’s ideals with those of the Bible. The powerful combination of Packer’s insights and Baxter’s grief provides a beacon in the often dark realm of grief.
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- Features an introspective memoir on grief from Richard Baxter
- Addresses contemporary, spiritual issues through a biblical lens
- Prologue: To the Reader
- Great Gladness: Margaret with Richard
- Two Puritans
- Great Goodness: Richard Recalls Margaret
- Of Her Parentage and the Occasion of Our Acquaintance
- Of Her Conversion, Sickness, and Recovery
- Of the Workings of Her Soul In and After This Sickness
- Some Parcels of Counsel for Her Deliverance from This Distressed Case, Which I Find Reserved by Her for Her Use
- Her Temper, Occasioning These Troubles of Mind
- Of Our Marriage and Our Habitations
- Of Her Exceeding Desires to Do Good
- Of Her Mental Qualifications and Her Infirmities
- Of Her Bodily Infirmities and Her Death
- Some Uses Proposed to the Reader from This History, as the Reasons Why I Wrote It
- Appendix: Two Poems from Poetical Fragments (1861)
- Great Sadness: Richard Without Margaret
- The Grieving Process
- Epilogue: To the Reader, Once More
Top Highlights
“Bereavement, we said—meaning the loss through death of someone we loved—brings grief in its most acute and most disabling form, and coping with such grief is always a struggle. Bereavement becomes a supreme test of the quality of our faith. Faith, as the divine gift of trust in the triune Creator-Redeemer, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and so as a habit implanted in the Christian heart, is meant to act as our gyroscopic compass throughout life’s voyage and our stabilizer in life’s storms.” (Page 10)
“Grief at the loss of a loved one is as old as the human race. Everyone who loves will experience it sooner or later, and the greater the love, the greater the grief when the time of loss arrives.” (Page 143)
“Puritanism of history was not the barbarous, sourpuss mentality of time-honored caricature, still less the heretical Manicheism (denial of the goodness and worth of created things and everyday pleasures) with which some scholars have identified it. It was, rather, a holistic renewal movement within English-speaking Protestantism that aimed to bring all life—personal, ecclesiastical, political, social, commercial, family life, business life, professional life—under the didactic authority and the purging and regenerating power of God in the Gospel to the fullest extent possible.” (Page 19)
“The loneliness of grief is one of the worst and most draining things about it—and, be it said, one of the most dangerous, too.” (Page 145)
“bereavement shakes unbelievers and believers alike to the foundations of their being” (Page 10)
J.I. Packer, is considered one of the most influential evangelicals in North America. Packer committed his life to Christ after hearing lectures from C.S. Lewis at Oxford. In the 1950s, Packer was ordained a deacon and priest in the Church of England. Before moving to Canada, he lectured at several schools, including Tyndale Hall in Bristol, Latimer House at Oxford, and Oak Hill Theological College in London.
Packer is currently a professor of theology at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia, and serves as the honorary president of the Latimer Trust. Packer has written and edited numerous books, including Illustrated Manners and Customs of the Bible and Concise Theology. He is also the editor of the English Standard Version of the Bible, the New Bible Dictionary, and New Dictionary of Theology.
Richard Baxter one of the great English pastors and theologians. Though without a university education, and always sickly, he acquired great learning. In 1633 he had a brief experience of court life at Whitehall (London), but turned from the court in disgust and studied theology. In 1638 he was ordained by the bishop of Worcester and preached in various places till 1641, when he began his ministry at Kidderminster (18 m.s.w. of Birmingham), as “teacher.” There he labored with wonderful success so that the place was utterly transformed. When the Civil War broke out (1642) he retired temporarily to Gloucester and then to Coventry because he sided with the parliament, while all in and about Kidderminster sided with the king. He was, however, no blind partizan and boldly spoke out for moderation and fairness. After acting as an army chaplain he separated from the army, partly on account of illness, and returned to Kidderminster.