"Beloved, I pray that all may go well with you and that you may be in good health, as it goes well with your soul" (3 John 2).
Posted : 16 Aug, 2011 12:28 PM
Is it true that when God sets you aside from active engagements, he thus sets you aside from all duty and labor? We do not think so. Is it too much to say that he thus summons you to a sphere of duty that, though it is more limited and unobserved, yet is even higher and holier because it is more self-denying and God-glorifying?
When you lose your health, it brings with it its own high and appropriate duties, obligations, and employments. It bears a special message from God to you, and through you to others.
Reflect on the work to be done in your own soul. Consider the testimony through this which you are to bear to the power of God's grace, to the sustaining energy of the gospel, and to the character of God. Does not the lone chamber of sickness have its own special and appropriate duties, responsibilities, and work? Are they not equally as difficult, as honorable, and as profitable as any which attach to the sphere of activity or to the season of health?
God now calls you to glorify him in a passive, rather than in an active consecration to his service. Graces up till now perhaps dormant, or only feebly brought into play, are now to be developed and exercised to their utmost capacity. Patience is to be cultivated. Submission is to be exhibited. Faith is to be exercised. Love is to be tried. And example is to be set. Are not these great achievements? Are they not holy and sublime?
Who will say that there is no sermon to be preached from that sick-bed? Yes, and it may be more solemn, more searching, more full of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit, than any the pulpit ever preached. The church and the world now have the testimony of one passing through the present and personal experience of what he speaks. A sick-room is no place to theorize about truth and eternity. All that transpires there is stern reality. The dust of human applause is laid aside. The breath of admiration is hushed. The flush of excitement has faded. The delirium of an admiring throng has passed away. The artificial gives place to the true. All is as real and solemn as eternity.
Do not deem yourself a useless burden because sickness has incapacitated you from active labor. God has only changed your sphere of duty. No doubt he has transferred you to one more glorifying to himself.
Therefore, receive with meekness your heavenly Father's dispensation. While it has set you apart from the Lord's work, it has set you apart more exclusively and entirely for the Lord himself. Your great desire has been to glorify him. Leave him to select the means which may best advance it. You have thought of health and activity, of life and usefulness. You have thought of being a champion for the truth, a herald of salvation to the ignorant and the lost, a leader in some high and laborious path of Christian enterprise. But God has ordained it otherwise. And now by sickness and suffering, by silence and solitude, he is giving you other work to perform, work which shall no less secure your usefulness and promote his glory.
by Octavius Winslow, 1856
Whate'er my God ordains is right:
holy his will abideth;
I will be still whate'er he doth;
and follow where he guideth:
he is my God: though dark my road,
he holds me that I shall not fall:
wherefore to him I leave it all.
Whate'er my God ordains is right:
he never will deceive me;
he leads me by the proper path;
I know he will not leave me:
I take, content, what he hath sent;
his hand can turn my griefs away,
and patiently I wait his day.
Whate'er my God ordains is right:
though now this cup, in drinking,
may bitter seem to my faint heart,
I take it, all unshrinking:
my God is true; each morn anew
sweet comfort yet shall fill my heart,
and pain and sorrow shall depart.
Whate'er my God ordains is right:
here shall my stand be taken;
though sorrow, need, or death be mine,
yet am I not forsaken;
my Father's care is round me there;
he holds me that I shall not fall:
and so to him I leave it all.
(Samuel Rodigast, 1675; tr. Catherine Winkworth, 1829-1878)
