Watson: "The world is a great inn; we are guests in this inn."

Image:  Renoir's "At the Inn of Mother Anthony" (1866)

We were blessed with a warm day of worship and fellowship at CRBC yesterday. You know something good is happening in your body when you meet for worship at 10:30 am; lunch at 12 noon; and another worship service at 1:00 pm and you still don’t leave church till 4:30 pm, because you are hanging out having good spiritual conversations with the brethren.

In Thomas Watson’s Heaven Taken by Storm or The Holy Violence a Christian Is to Put Forth in Pursuit After Glory (original 1669; Northampton Press, 2007), a chapter is devoted to “Sanctifying the Lord’s Day and Holy Conversation.” On holy conversations Watson provides these thoughts:

Oh, let us offer violence to ourselves in setting abroach good discourse! What should our words dilate and expiate upon but heaven? The world is a great inn; we are guests in this inn. When travelers meet in their inn, they do not spend all their time speaking about the inn; they are to lodge there but a few hours, and are gone. But they speak of their home, and the country where they are traveling. So when we meet together, we should not be talking only about the world (we are to leave this one presently); but we should talk of our heavenly country (Hebrews 11:16).

JTR