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A Grief Sanctified - love, loss and hope in the life of Richard Baxter

A Grief Sanctified: love, loss and hope in the life of Richard Baxter
By Jim Packer
IVP/Crossway. 208 pages. £6.99
ISBN 1 85684 090 5

Jim Packer is one of the best, most accessible writers of our day. Richard Baxter and C.S. Lewis were the same in their day. So it was a great pleasure to read a book by Packer on Lewis and Baxter.
This book is ostensibly a comparison on the issue of bereavement of both C.S. Lewis in his book A Grief Observed and Richard Baxter's immensely moving book on his own wife's death, an updated English version of which is included in the text. Both Baxter and Lewis were married respectively to women whom they deeply loved, and with whom they had real intellectual affinity and companionship, as well as all the other things normally associated with married life. Reading Baxter's glowing account of his wife's virtues was thus very moving in and of itself. Packer is also able to show that despite his grief, Lewis did not at all lose his faith as a result of Joy's death, something that can often be forgotten today.
But Packer being the man he is, this is also more than just a very helpful book to read on the subject of bereavement in particular and suffering in general. It is a staunch defence of the profound relevance of Puritan thought in our own day, of the supreme realism and practicality of their everyday faith, often, as we see clearly in the book, in the face of extraordinarily adverse circumstances. It is also a marvellous treatise on marriage itself, and on the spiritual preparation needed for it which we very easily forget today.
This is therefore a book for a much wider audience than the subject matter would suggest. It is a book for all to read, not just to prepare us for bereavement (death and taxes are, after all, the two inevitabilities of life!) but to show us how to lead a Christian life pleasing to God - the great Puritan concern that should be ours as well.

Christopher Catherwood