Thanks for your letter, be of good heart, and He shall strengthen thine heart.
3 Today I received a long letter from home in which
Pa asked me if it would suit us both to go to Amsterdam next Sunday to visit
Uncle Cor.
4 If it’s all right with you, then I’ll come to you in The Hague on Saturday evening on the train that arrives a few minutes after 11, and in the morning we’ll take the first train to Amsterdam and stay till evening.
We ought to do it,
Pa seems very keen on the idea, then we’ll be together again next Sunday. It is possible, isn’t it, for me to stay with you that night? Otherwise I’ll go to the Toelast.
5 Write a postcard now if you agree, let us stick close together.
Herewith a few words for
Uncle Cor,
6 add something to it if you like. It’s already late, this afternoon I took a walk,
7 because I felt such a need to, first around the Grote Kerk, then the Nieuwe Kerk, and then up onto the dyke where all those mills
8 are that one sees in the distance if one walks along the railway tracks. There is so much in that singular landscape and vicinity that speaks and
1v:2 seems to say ‘be of good courage, fear not’.
9There are days in one’s life when all members suffer because one member suffers,
10 and where there is true ‘godly sorrow,’
11 God is not far, He who will hold us.
12 If we believe that, let us, in those days, fervently desire and ask for things we should like to see happen, that we might also be heard.
13 Would you also ask for me that a way be found
14 for me to devote my life, more so than is now the case, to the service of Him and the gospel?
15 I continue to insist and I believe that I’ll be heard, I say this in all humility and bowing myself down, as it were. It is such an import and such a difficult matter, and yet I desire it. One might say it isn’t humanly possible, but if I think about it more seriously and delve beneath the surface of what is humanly impossible,
16 then truly my soul waiteth upon God,
17 for it is possible for Him who speaks, and it is done, who commands, and it stands, and it stands fast.
18 O Theo, Theo, old boy, if only it might happen to me and that deluge of downcastness about everything which I undertook and failed at, that torrent of reproaches I’ve heard and felt, if it might be taken away from me and if I might be given the opportunity and the strength and the love required to develop and to persevere and to stand firm in that for which my Father and I would offer the Lord such heartfelt thanks. A handshake in thought and regards to everyone at
the Rooses’, ask
it for me in this thy day,
19 and believe me