Acknowledgments
John Donne is usually acknowledged to be the greatest of the so-called metaphysical poets. He was twenty-one years older than George Herbert, and a close friend of Herbert’s mother. Donne’s influence on Herbert was significant. Some of his most famous lines are:
No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main. . . .And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.1
The older I get and the more of my life on this earth is behind me rather than before me, the more I feel the truth of this. I am what I am as a thread in a fabric, a grape in a cluster, a spark in a fire, a bee in a hive, a nerve in a body, an ingredient in a recipe, a stone in a wall, or a drop in an ocean.
To be sure, I deeply value individuality, and loathe the horrors of constrained, homogenous, communistic sameness. God made individuals with stunning distinctiveness and as absolutely unique refractions of his glory. Nevertheless, the greatest glory is when these refractions compose a unified display of God’s greatness, as a stained-glass window with thousands of fragments reveals one bright picture—not in spite of the differences among the fragments, but because of them. Or like a tapestry with millions of matchless threads—yellow, orange, blue, and crimson fragmentary alone—being woven into a perfect whole.
So it is no artificial humility for me to say that I am more thankful at age sixty-eight than I have ever been for the people who have made this book possible. They are more than I can remember or honor. Dozens of those who have made this book possible are dead. They have been dead for centuries and are as much a part of my life as many of the living. In my home, and in high school, and college, and seminary, and graduate school, and college teaching, and pastoring there have been hundreds of people who have shaped the way I think and the way I respond to the world and to God.
And there are the obvious ones who are close and precious. My wife and children and even grandchildren shape my heart in these days. Noël and Talitha make a home for me as the three of us eat and sleep and talk and read and pray together.
David Mathis, the executive editor at desiringGod.org, and Marshall Segal, my executive assistant, protect, distill, provide, suggest, correct, refine, and encourage with devotion and excellence so that I can flourish in the ministry of the Word.
Since stepping down as pastor for preaching at Bethlehem Baptist Church in March of 2013, Desiring God has been my new base of operations. I’m called founder and teacher. They pay my salary. They share me with Bethlehem College and Seminary so that I can function as chancellor and teach part-time. All this means that I am surrounded and sustained by an amazing team of partners (at DG and BCS) committed to spreading a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples through Jesus Christ.
I thank God for this beautiful fabric of life into which I have been woven.
Crossway has again been willing to publish another volume, this one the sixth, in the series The Swans Are Not Silent. Because of this partnership, the fruit of all the other influences of my life are made available to the public. May God continue to weave, with this book, tens of thousands of threads into the great tapestry of his Christ-exalting purpose in the world.
I am not an island. When the bell tolls for a thousand losses in the lives of others, it tolls for me. And with this book, even more of us will be woven together. The tapestry grows, the beauties increase, and the sorrows multiply—until the last stitch is made and all is beauty.
1 John Donne, “Meditation 17” (1623) in The Complete Poetry and Selected Prose of John Donne, ed. Charles M. Coffin (New York: Random House, 1952), 440–41.