“WHEN Thou with rebukes dost chasten man,” says David, “thou makest his beauty to consume away like a moth. Surely every man is vanity!” (Psalm 39, 12.)
David could speak thus, because evidently He had been much sick. Nowhere more than in the Psalms you find continual references to all sorts of sickness. Sometimes it is even almost possible to make out the nature of David’s sickness from this or another Psalm. As for instance from Psalm 38, from which it is evident how near unto death David had been.
It is customary indeed to take many of these utterances of soul in a spiritual sense; something that by reason of the coherence between soul and body is permissible; yet it behooves us first to ask what David immediately meant.
By so doing, the sick-bed also would find its place more often in the preaching of the Word, and with visiting the sick the Minister of the Word would observe, how greatly his language, his speech and his provision of sacred direction and comforting would be enriched.
Sickness is such a weighty element in the homelife, and also in the faithlife of God’s children, when this broad domain, in which so much anguish and so much anxiety is suffered, is excluded from the sacred.
Yea, one may say, that a considerable part of the purpose, for which God the Lord sends us all sorts of sickness, is altogether lost, when by reason of carelessness or by overspirituality, the rich teaching of the Word regarding the sick-bed does not come to its own.
CONSIDER for a moment, therefore, what the Psalmist says of the rapid exhaustion of strength, which with so many an ailment overtakes the sufferer.
Then consumes, says David, our beauty like a moth. Or rather, for in this also the Lord God is the worker, then He makes our beauty to consume away like a moth.
You see this especially with one who is still in the strength of his life. Then there was first thriving, sometimes glowing health. Muscles, that could hold out. Strong pulsebeat in the blood. A fresh and animated exterior. An eye, that by its glistening addressed you.
But scarcely began the germ of sickness to develop itself and the disease to take hold, but the strength broke, the muscles became flabby, the eye duller, weaker the voice, and everything that only lately was all animation and buoyancy, is suddenly gone.
When you come to the bedside, and have not watched the transition from day to day, you scarcely recognize the sufferer.
Everything is so changed.
It is sometimes said: melted like snow before the sun; but the Psalmist uses a yet more striking figure.
Like as you catch a moth, and rub him in pieces between your fingers, so that you scarcely know, what becomes of him, so likewise consumes that beauty and that virile strength, which before the sickness so attracted you.
THEN he who suffers and they that are at the bedside learn, that surely every man is vanity.
In ordinary times we know two kinds of people. Strong and weak. And we suffer with the weak, because we realize how difficult to them every step is, which they take on the highway of life. But with the strong we receive rather the impression of strength, as though ordinary human vanity were not their portion. One laughs at them, when they complain. And spoiled by that feeling of strength and by that mocking laugh, they all too readily imagine, that for them there is less need, every morning and every evening anew to pray for well-being to the God of their life.
But in the sick-room this difference is gone.
Then the strong man, too, has become mortally weak, and it even seems that the dreadful transition from strength to exhaustion, brings out the more the weakness of the strong.
Then one sees how it took almost nothing, to cast down that strong man like an helpless child.
Surely, as David says, every man is vanity.
David himself undoubtedly was a strong, powerful man, and yet he had experienced himself, how as in one moment God had turned him into a trembling soul, him, who once like an oak of the forest had aroused the jealousy of many.
THEN with rebukes the Lord chastens man for sin, says David.
Not of course as though he who remained in health, had not sinned, and as though he who became ill, had fallen into special sin.
This they who care for the sick know better, and the good nurse at least is always more troubled about her own sin than about the sin of her who lies so mortally ill.
Serious illness always speaks to the conscience of those who stand about the bed.
But therefore it must never be forgotten, that without sin there would have been neither sickness nor mortal anxiety.
All sickness is prelude to death, and is there solely on account of sin.
But that chastening of sickness does not count individually, does not go head for head, and is not measured out man for man after the measure of every one’s sin.
This chastening comes upon all; it is poured out upon the masses, and God portions out sickness according to His divine counsel, that not only our own, but also the sickness of others, should strike and humble us.
Sickness is common suffering, which is most unequally divided, whereby God instructs us, that we do not only have our personal sin, but also our collective sin, and that not least against this His holiness is in wrath. O, if there were no sickness, how much more over-bold man would be.
And also how much love and how much devotion, which are in evidence now, would never have unfolded.
YET the main preaching of such consuming of the strength of the sufferer is our vanity.
Not least in days of such anxiety must the lesson of our dependence be learned.
Of deep dependence with and without medicine.
He who calls upon God only, when there is no cure, does not understand the highness of the Lord, and undervalues the comfort, which He, and He alone, gave us in medicine.
O, it is so absurd, at every meal you take, to invoke God’s blessing, and to have no need of that blessing, when our life hangs on a silken thread, and medicine is all we can take.
But that lesson of our deep dependence must not be limited to the sick-room.
The purpose of your sickness is not, that for some months you should depend upon God, and presently, when your breath is able again to move a feather, to forget your God again.
It is a lesson for life, which must be learned in the sick-room.
One who has recovered from sickness should never be able again to forget his deep dependence upon his God, and they who stood around his bed should have learned by watching him, how absolutely nothing they also are without their God.
After sickness the faith of God’s child must work an effect of its own.
Surely not to murmur and not to complain too much; but also and no less, to learn better than otherwise could have been learned that difficult lesson, that everything is vanity, and that he alone who rests in God’s hand, has peace within.
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