The pictures on this post are from Claire B.
Aren't they great? Thank you, Claire for letting me use them.

This is the second Thursday I share about the book we are reading together at Challies.com The book is The Bruised Reed by the Puritan author Richard Sibbes.
My comments on chapters 1 and 2 are here.

Chapter 3. The Smoking Flax

This is not an easy chapter, this is a chapter that brought tears to my eyes. Its words are like spades, they reached deep within my soul.

Sibbes, reminded me on how my spiritual life started, with little faith, with a “small beginning of grace” . And I just can’t but think how even that little portion of faith was given to me as an undeserved gift by my Father in Heaven, and was enough to save my life from an eternity far from Him.

So broken, so bruised, so dirty was my life, but He reached and gave me His saving Grace to “strive to perfection, and to keep me in a low opinion of myself“

He saw me; He reached to me, a bruised reed, and did not break me forever, He did not despise me.

Little beginnings full of grace. That is all we need.

Grace upon grace.

Grace for every day.

Small changes soaked in His grace.

Grace came and changed me, it gave me eternal life, but “grace does not do away with corruption all at once, but some is left for believers to fight with. The purest actions of the purest men need Christ to perfume them; and this is his office.”

The thorns of my flesh, are there, every day, to remind me of my desperate need of Him. To remind me that I am a bruised reed , to “preserve me from those two dangerous rocks which our natures are prone to dash upon, security and pride…”

I am in a daily journey to heaven…and “even as a candle in the socket shows its light, and sometimes the show of light is lost; so sometimes “I am” well persuaded of myself, sometimes at a loss.”
So here too, I see His light shining on this bruised reed, which is my own life.

A repost from the archives