Biblical Studies

In the preface to his book To Be Near Unto God , Abraham Kuyper has these comments about having a proper mystical sense in our relationship with God...  As in everything that risks itself in the depth of mysticism, so in the preparation of these Meditations, lurked undeniable danger. The soul that seeks God involuntarily inclines to step across the boundary appointed of God, defined by the word "near," and to force an entrance into His Being. From the first I was on guard against this danger, and I believe I have escaped it. On the other hand, fear of this danger could not be allowed to repress that fervor and that spiritual warmth, which refreshes the soul only when the feelings are aroused and the imagination awakened. Mere thinking is not meditation, this is something quite different, and, in view of the wide-awake preparedness necessary to withstand the constant onslaught waged from the gates of hell against the Church of the living God, with a fierceness that neither res...

" Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you." (Psalm 73:25 ESV) Over many months I have been reading Abraham Kuyper's book, To Be Near Unto God (1908), which is a series of devotionals (110 of them), written while he served as prime minister of The Netherlands from 1901 to 1905. Eerdmans published an English edition in 1918, which I have just finished.  Kuyper was a remarkable Dutch Reformed theologian, and his devotional writings have a refreshing balance of doctrine and mysticism. He is doctrinally Protestant and Reformed, but often he writes like Thomas a Kempis.  Here's an excerpt from one of his chapters, where he is commenting on Psalm 73:25...  "By itself this means to know nothing in heaven but God, which is quite the same as to love God with all the mind and soul and heart. But Asaph's question puts the matter still more clearly before us. The struggle of our heart on earth is, that it goes out after all ...