Let this comfort you:

(Letters of John Newton)

"My times are in Your hands!" Psalm 31:15

What a mercy it is that all our concerns are in sure hands! Not a hair of our heads can fall to the ground, but by the appointment of Him who orders and marshals the stars and calls them all by their names!

Diseases and sicknesses are His messengers, and, when they have answered His end-then He will recall them. But on many accounts there is a need be that we should sometimes be in heaviness for a season. O may we learn to take up the cross, and to kiss the rod of affliction. We need to look through all second causes-to Him who appoints and over-rules, and without whose permission, not a hair of our heads shall fall to the ground.

The Lord has promised to direct, moderate, sanctify, and relieve every trial of every kind. I long to have a more entire submission to His will, and a more steadfast confidence in His Word-to trust Him and wait on Him-to see His hand, and praise His name, in every circumstance of life, great and small.

Is sickness your present cross? It can come no sooner, nor fall heavier, than He bids it. And when His end is answered, and His hour comes to give relief-then sickness departs at His word. The cure becomes easy then, even where it seemed desperate before.

Our comforts are never safer than when we can fully trust the Lord to do with them, and with us-as He sees fit. He will not willingly or unnecessarily grieve His redeemed children. When His arm seems lifted up to strike them-how often does He put it into their hearts to run toward Him and humble themselves before Him, and thus prevent the blow!

We shall have cause to be thankful for all our afflictions-if the Lord is pleased to employ them as means to make us more humble and broken-hearted, and to wean our hearts from this vain world.

Sickness often gives us a sensible proof of the vanity of everything earthly. May the Lord sanctify our sicknesses and pains, to quicken our desires for that better world, when pain shall be no more!

Let this comfort you: that Jesus is the Great Physician!

"Great crowds came to Him, bringing the lame, the blind, the crippled, the mute and many others, and laid them at His feet; and He healed them!" Matthew 15:30