The Heart of Henry

            One of my ministry heroes once said, “The only thing I don’t like about Matthew Henry is that I didn’t start reading him sooner.” It is a fitting testament to the wide appeal and accessibility of Henry’s massive commentary on the Bible that my own set was given to me by a layman in my home church. I treasure it.

            If you’ve read Henry, then you know that he is thorough and wonderfully practical, which is probably the secret to the popularity and perseverance of his work almost 300 years after his death.

            Though not technically one of the Puritans, Henry is certainly just downstream of them. With that being said, what I love about Henry is a joyfulness that is sometimes missing in other Puritan writings. The old word for this is “winsomeness”. There is a “joy in the Lord” that seeps out from Henry’s pen.

            That winsomeness did not come from an easy life, however. I’ve been reading a biography of Henry and was surprised to learn that his first wife died early in their marriage, while giving birth to their first child. That child later died as well. Henry remarried and a second child was born. Sadly, this child also died.

            In his diary, Henry wrote, “The Lord is righteous, he takes and gives, gives and takes again; I desire to submit, but, O Lord, shew me wherefore thou contendest with me.”

            The Sunday after the baby’s funeral, Henry preached on Romans 5:14: “Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come.” Acknowledging that within that same year, two of his children, and two other members of his family had passed away, he could still say, “The Lord is gracious.”

            Without saying much about the softness of our generation, I do recognize that my own joyfulness is often fairly easily robbed from me. I’ve buried no loved ones, save a few elderly grandparents. Yet, an encounter with a grouchy church member can cast a shadow over the first few days of a week, if I let it. What I want, however, is a joyfulness and a deep-down grasp of the goodness of God, so that even when life is lousy, I recognize that the God is still gracious.

            Nehemiah 8:10 says, ‘…the joy of the Lord is your strength.” May it be so! Thanks again, Matthew Henry.

His,

Terry