The Father's Love

And what a safe place the saints have to retreat to when they suffer the scorn, reproaches, scandals and misrepresentations of the world. When a child is bullied and hurt in the streets by strangers, he quickly runs home to the love and protection of his father. There he tells everything and is comforted. In all the hard words and slanders which the saints meet with in the streets of the world, they may come home to their Father and tell him all their troubles and sorrows and be comforted. 'As one whom his mother comforts, so will I comfort you,' says the Lord (Isa. 66:13). And the soul may say, 'If I am hated in the world, I will go where I know I am loved. Though all others hate me, yet my Father is tender and full of compassion. I will go to him and find happiness in him. In the world I am considered vile. I am frowned on and rejected. But I have honour and love with the Father whose kindness is better than life itself. There I shall have all things in their fulness, which others have only in dribs and drabs. There is in my Father's love everything I desire. There I find the sweetness of all his infinite mercies.'

John Owen, Communion With God, P.35