Letters from Aberdeen

In 1636, Scottish pastor Samuel Rutherford was stripped of his pulpit and banished to the remote city of Aberdeen. The authorities meant it as punishment — exile from everything he loved. They expected silence.

Instead, Rutherford wrote letters. Hundreds of them. And from that cold northern exile, the most extraordinary language poured out. "I have found the sweetness of Christ's love in my bonds," he wrote to a friend. "My Lord Jesus has come and turned my prison into a palace."

He was not speaking in metaphor. Rutherford insisted he had never known Christ so intimately as during those months of confinement. He described his experience the way a person describes a feast — the taste of grace, the richness of presence, the satisfaction of a God who draws impossibly near to the brokenhearted.

The psalmist issues an invitation that sounds almost audacious: "Taste and see that the Lord is good." Not consider. Not theorize. Taste — as if the goodness of the Almighty is something you can roll across your tongue, something that satisfies a hunger nothing else can reach.