Our Souls are Made for Love and Staggering Beauty

Welcome to another Thursday UNFILTERED blog post, the only blog that thinks receipts are just confetti from financial regret.

Quick note before today’s article: If you preach or teach God’s word, registration for the 2027 Insurgence Experience Kingdom Leaders Mastermind opens soon. Apply here and full details will be sent your way.

Now for today’s (short) article.

Read this brief quote slowly and take it all in:

“Our souls are made for love, and they cannot help loving someone beautiful. And what a beautiful One, what a singular One, what a magnificent, captivating One Jesus is!

Imagine combining the beauty of ten thousand worlds of paradise—every garden of Eden rolled into one—every tree, every flower, every fragrance, every color, every taste, every joy, every sweetness, every loveliness, all gathered together.

What an extraordinary and beautiful thing that would be! And yet all of it would be less, compared to that beautiful and dearly beloved Christ, than a single drop of rain compared to all the seas, rivers, lakes, and springs of ten thousand worlds. Christ is the wonder of heaven and the wonder of earth!”

That’s a revised quote from Samuel Rutherford, a Scottish Presbyterian minister and theologian who lived in the 1600s.

I stumbled across the original quote two weeks ago, and it needed a serious 21st-century glow-up. So I translated it for you.

A message that I delivered in a conference a number of years ago sought to capture the essence of the staggering beauty and stunning glory of the Lord Jesus Christ, which Rutherford so eloquently captured in his quote.

The message is called “Rethinking Discipleship.”

If it stirs you, you’re welcome to share the talk directly from YouTube. And “likes” on the video always help. If you’re on Substack, you can “restack” this article so others may benefit.

Give the message a listen here.

Here is Rutherford’s original quote, which uses 16^th century verbiage:

“This soul of ours hath love, and cannot but love some fair one. And oh what a fair One, what an only One, what an excellent, lovely ravishing One is Jesus! Put the beauty of ten thousand thousand worlds of paradises, like the garden of Eden in one, put all trees, all flowers, all smells, all colours, all tastes, all joys, all sweetness, all loveliness, in one: oh, what a fair and excellent thing would that be! And yet it would be less to that fair and dearest well-beloved Christ, than one drop of rain to the whole seas, rivers, lakes, and fountains of ten thousand earths. Oh, but Christ is heaven’s wonder and earth’s wonder!”

~ Samuel Rutherford

In this together with you,

fv