Closeness

I am reading a book right now about Hudson Taylor. I have read one book about him before but this one talks about the growth of the China Inland Mission that he started.

He and his team were some of the first missionaries to venture into the inland parts of China to preach the gospel. They got started around the 1860s.

The book is beautiful. Oh to be a missionary 150 years ago. I know that I was born at the exact time that God wanted me to be born but there is something inside of me that longs to be a missionary from the 1800s.

Pioneers without MacBooks.

There are many truths and thoughts that are lodging themselves into my heart as I read this book but I just read a part that I feel compelled to share.

Referring to the missionary Hudson Taylor it reads...

"Nearness to Christ had been to him so real and blessed that any distance was unbearable. So deeply did he love that any clouding of the Master's face was felt, and felt at once with anguish of heart. It is the bride who mourns the absence of the bridegroom, not one who has been a stranger to His love."

Amen. I want that. Don't you?
I want to be so close in my relationship to Christ that any distance between us is unbearable. I want to mourn His absence. Paola and I were talking about this just this morning. We can't wait to be face to face with the creator of the universe. We can't imagine what that encounter will be like.

We don't want any distance between us and God.
And if there is, we want it be unbearable.