Faith & Spirit Quote by Samuel Rutherford

Prayer here isn’t pitched as a halo-polishing ritual; it’s an admission of spiritual self-interest, made respectable through candor. Rutherford’s line turns intercession into a kind of holy detour: you set out to plead for someone else, and along the way you’re changed. The sly power is that it refuses the pious pose that prayer is purely altruistic. Instead, it frames the heart as something God works on indirectly, the way a difficult conversation can unexpectedly clarify what you actually believe.

The phrase “making an errand to God” is doing heavy lifting. It domesticates the divine without shrinking it: God is not a vending machine, but He is approachable, someone you can “go to” with the ordinary urgency of human need. “Errand” also implies discipline and repetition, not a single dramatic moment. Intercession becomes a practice that forms the pray-er, training attention away from the self while simultaneously returning the self to God in a healthier shape.

Rutherford’s context matters: a 17th-century Scottish Presbyterian, repeatedly exiled and embroiled in church-state conflict, he knew what it meant to be powerless in public life. In that pressure-cooker, praying for others isn’t escapism; it’s a counter-politics of the soul. The subtext is almost paradoxical: the best way to receive is to stop chasing receiving. You go for them; grace meets you on the road.