What more appropriate, more soothing truth can we bring before you, suffering Christian, than this?
You are sick�lean on Jesus. His sick ones are particularly dear to his heart. You are dear to him. In all your pains and languishings, faintings and exhaustion, Jesus is with you. For he created your frame; he remembers that it is but dust; and he bids you to lean upon him, and leave your sickness and its outcome entirely in his hands.
You are oppressed�lean on Jesus. He will undertake your cause. And committing it thus into his hands, he will bring forth your righteousness as the light, and your judgment as the noonday.
You are lonely�lean on Jesus. Sweet will be the communion and close the fellowship which you may thus hold with him, your heart burning within you while he talks with you by the way.
Is the ascent steep and difficult? Lean on your Beloved.
Is the path strait and narrow? Lean on your Beloved.
Do intricacies and perplexities and trials weave their network around your feet? Lean on your Beloved.
Has death smitten down the strong arm and chilled the tender heart upon which you were accustomed to recline? Lean on your Beloved.
Oh! lean on Jesus in every strait, in every need, in every sorrow, in every temptation. Nothing is too small, nothing too insignificant, to take to Christ. That you want Christ is enough to warrant you in coming to Christ. You do not need to make any excuse for going to him. He will require no apology for the frequency of your approach. He loves to have you quite near to him, to hear your voice, and to feel the confidence of your faith and the pressure of your love. Ever remember that there is a place in the heart of Christ reserved for you, and which no one can fill but you, and from which none may dare exclude you.
And when you are dying, oh! lay your languishing head on the bosom of your Beloved, and do not fear the foe, and do not dread the passage; for his rod and his staff, they will comfort you. On that bosom the beloved disciple leaned at supper. On that bosom the martyr Stephen laid his bleeding brow in death. And on that bosom you, too, beloved, may repose, living or dying, soothed, supported, and sheltered by your Savior and your Lord.
