This summer, Cross Creek Church is working through Jeremiah Burroughs’ A Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment, and Pastor Chris Peters and Director of Women’s Ministries Laura Dougherty sat down to talk about what that means and why it matters. This is the first in a series of short conversations they recorded around the book.
Jeremiah Burroughs wrote this book about 400 years ago, which raises a fair question: does a Puritan writing in the 1600s still have something to say to us?
Pastor Chris points to something C.S. Lewis observed about old books. Every reader is shaped by their own moment in history, and writers working today are caught in the same cultural blind spots we are. Older writers had their own weaknesses, but we can see those clearly now. What they offer is a perspective from outside our current assumptions, and that’s harder to find than it sounds.
There’s also the matter of who the Puritans actually were. The common picture is severe and joyless, but Pastor Chris notes that their own neighbors reportedly described them as too happy in the Lord. They were people who found great joy in Christ even while walking through challenges and suffering. That’s not the caricature most of us carry.
Burroughs frames contentment not as a personality trait or a mood, but as something learned. He calls it the school of Christ. In a moment when most of us have no shortage of information but not much that actually challenges or deepens us, that framing is worth paying attention to.
