About Anwoth

My name is Will Lee, and I live with my wife and two children (and one on the way!) in Suffolk, Virginia. I work at Westminster Reformed Presbyterian Church as Director for Small Group Discipleship and Music Associate. I blog because (1) I think it’s a very helpful way to practice writing skills, (2) it helps me to think through ideas when I have to communicate them, (3) I think I have something useful to say at times, (4) I want to interact with other people about God, his Word and his world, and (5) it’s fun.

I named my blog Anwoth after Anwoth, Scotland, the home town of the 17th century Puritan pastor, Samuel Rutherford. Rutherford exemplified the God-entranced vision of life that I want for myself and want to pass on to my readers. My favorite Rutherford quote: “Whether God come to his children with a rod or a crown, if he come himself with it, it is well.”

I was first introduced to Rutherford through his Letters, a collection of his correspondence from his time in Anwoth, but mostly from his time exiled in Aberdeen. Charles Spurgeon said of Rutherford’s Letters, “When we are dead and gone let the world know that Spurgeon held Rutherford’s Letters to be the nearest thing to inspiration which can be found in all the writings of mere men.”

Rutherford was a man who suffered much. He was exiled from his home and church and was left with only his pen to communicate with his people. Praise God for his providence! Were it not for that exile, we never would have had the wonderful letters that he wrote. In 1636, while in exile, Rutherford wrote, “O how sweet are the sufferings of Christ for Christ! God forgive them that raise an ill report upon the sweet cross of Christ. It is but our weak and dim eyes, and our looking only to the black side, that makes us mistake. Those who can take that crabbed tree handsomely upon their back, and fasten it on cannily, shall find it such a burden as wings unto a bird or sails to a ship.” Oh, that we would find our Christ so sweet and his cross so beautiful!

To buy the Letters of Samuel Rutherford, click on the book below: