OUR sick! O, who spells for us the overrunning measure of secretly suffered anguish and hidden pain, that lies back of that “our sick”! Little is known of it, but behind curtains many an anxious scene is enacted. In the sick-room what illusions are cut off, what friendly little lights are extinguished, what flowers broken at the stem. And then at times, moreover, those physical pains. Pain is so deeply grievous. And then those long-continued pains. That there is no end to them. And that it cuts so deep and gnaws as it were at our bones. A veil hangs before it. People at large have little knowledge of it, but yet “our sick,” it is a separate world, and safely add, a dreadful world, at least so long as one must suffer in it without his God.
Do you think much about these “sick”? Do they live in your prayer? Are they, not formally, but with pity and compassion, remembered in the prayers of the Church on the Lord’s days?
They are “our sick,” and you feel what that implies. “Our” sick, who belong to us, who from our circles, from our church, from our living-rooms, went to the sick-room; of our flesh and our blood.
“Our sick,” who lie there, to say something to us, to arrest us in our playfulness, to tell us: “Presently it comes to you.” Our sick, who became sick that we should practice our love on them, that our faith should become manifest to them, that comfort should come at our lips. Our sick, who lie down in white robes as priests and priestesses, softly to whisper to us: “Only through and because of sin; thus also because of and for you!” Yea, why hold it back in the pen, in our depraved and corrupting life “our sick” are a salt that averts corruption. If those sicknesses had not come, how many souls would never have found their God, how much devotion and self-denial would never have unfolded, how much more unbridled the merry-making of the world would gallop along its undulating path? Sicknesses, they are an arresting grace for all our circle of life. And that is the glory of our sick that lie down. They think they are doing nothing, and see, they bless us. They deem that all their suffering is for nought, and yet their sorrows are a cement for God’s house.
Wonderful, is it not? Because otherwise it would go beyond all limits in wantonness and playfulness; God sends an angel who smites, and from the viol of this angel there falls here and there a drop of wrath upon a dear ruddy child, which pales and emaciates, and yonder falls a drop upon a consecrated child of God, who was zealously at work for the Lord of hosts and is now suddenly arrested in his course.
Why, you would say in your fancy, why, when there must be sick, does not God’s ban strike the godless or the aged, who must pass on anyway?
And, of course, so long as “being sick” is to you a purposeless waste of time, it cannot be understood. But when you realize that “being sick” is a discipline of strength in the Kingdom, that by that “being sick” God binds the devil in society and makes tenderest devotion to unfold, O, then it becomes altogether different. Then you understand that a sick person sometimes is far more useful and accomplishes far more for the Lord than a man, who walks about in his strength. And then it will also dawn upon you, why time and again God brings sickness upon so many of His dearest children. For they are the persons through whose sickness He can accomplish most. God’s dear children always have other children of God, who love them tenderly. So devotion comes into play most beautifully. God’s dear children are Satan’s most favorite targets. So they need a heavier weight on the clock of their soul than other people. And also, from their dying bed more can go out from God’s dear children than from the children of the world.
Rivet and Witsius were both highly learned professors. And yet it is the question whether by the few days of their sick-bed they did not make contribution of more intrinsic merit to the building up of the Kingdom of God than by their learned treatises. We cannot make true reckonings of this, but the spiritual power of a God-glorifying sick-bed reaches so endlessly far. It is a spark that ignites and from which ignition new sparks are again ignited; from generation to generation. So sinks the grain of wheat away into the ground, but always new grains ripen on the top of the stalks!
And whether then God does no wrong?
No injustice by imposing this distress upon His dearest children?
Think of Golgotha! “He was wounded for our transgressions! Through His stripes our healing.” And at once you would take back your question, would you not?
But, no, don’t do that. Have something of Job’s courage and with him say to your Comforter: “God’s cause is in no need of palliation! I will speak to the Almighty, and I will reason with God” (Job 13, 3).
FOR truly there is a solution.
God the Lord does no wrong when He lays affliction upon His dearest children, “for,” says the Spirit by David (Ps. 41, 3): “Thou changest all their bed in sickness!” (See Rev. Ver. marg.)
A God, Who has such hidden power, may freely risk His dearest children to it.
For “changing all their bed” what is this mystery?
Is it not Mara?
Israel that, weary of the pilgrim-journey, in the wilderness comes to a well, but cannot drink the waters; for see, those waters were bitter. And then Israel’s shepherd called upon the Lord, and the Lord showed him something. He cast it into the well. And see, the bitter water became sweet. And then Israel continued their pilgrim-journey, and found twelve fountains of water and seventy palm trees, and they encamped around those waters.
For this, truly this, is the sacred mystery of God’s dearest children, when they go through the wilderness of sicknesses: God changes everything for them.
Sometimes not. Then He goes away and leaves them alone. Be it because they had not loved Him, be it because their love had to be put to the proof! And then it is dreadful. Then roarings ascend from the abysses of their soul within them. Then rebellion settles down upon them as a dark cloud, pierced only now and then by a lightning-flash of faith.
But that does not last. Soon or late the Lord comes back, and then a miracle takes place. For then everything remains as it was; perhaps the sickness becomes even worse; and yet nothing in it is as it was before. “In sickness God has changed all his bed!”
It remains bitter and yet it has become sweet.
Because the Lord came and took hold of the soul and inbreathed power from within and comforted with His tenderest comfortings.
And then a way of faith opens! Everything assumes a new aspect! They wave their branches already from afar, those glorious palms around the refreshing fountains of water. And there the children of God then encamp. And, while the bystanders think: “How terrible indeed! how bitterly sorrowful!”—they are not aware of it, they taste as sweet, what was bitter when it reached the lips.
O, with God or without God, that makes in sickness the bed so altogether different.
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