I believe it is possible--and that some have achieved it--so to believe
in and rest upon the immutable Health--so to regard one's own sickness
as a kind of passing aberration, that the soul is thereby sustained,
even as sometimes in a weary dream the man is comforted by telling
himself it is but a dream, and that waking is sure. God would have us
reasonable and strong. Every effort of his children to rise above
the invasion of evil in body or in mind is a pleasure to him. Few, I
suppose, attain to this; but there is a better thing which to many, I
trust, is easier--to say, Thy will be done.
But now let us look at the miracle as received by the woman.
She had "a great fever." She was tossing from side to side in vain
attempts to ease a nameless misery. Her head ached, and forms dreary,
even in their terror, kept rising before her in miserable and aimless
dreams; senseless words went on repeating themselves ill her very brain
was sick of them; she was destitute, afflicted, tormented; now the
centre for the convergence of innumerable atoms, now driven along in an
uproar of hideous globes; faces grinned and mocked at her; her mind
ever strove to recover itself, and was ever borne away in the rush of
invading fancies; but through it all was the nameless unrest, not an
aching, nor a burning, nor a stinging, but a bodily grief, dark, drear,
and nameless. How could they have borne such before He had come?
A sudden ceasing of motions uncontrolled; a coolness gliding through
the burning skin; a sense of waking into repose; a consciousness of
all-pervading well-being, of strength conquering weakness, of light
displacing darkness, of urging life at the heart; and behold! she is
sitting up in her bed, a hand clasping hers, a face looking in hers. He
has judged the evil thing, and it is gone. He has saved her out of her
distresses. They fold away from off her like the cerements of death. She
is new-born--new-made--all things are new-born with her--and he who
makes all things new is there. From him, she knows, has the healing
flowed. He has given of his life to her. Away, afar behind her floats
the cloud of her suffering. She almost forgets it in her grateful joy.
She is herself now. She rises. The sun is shining. It had been shining
all the time--waiting for her. The lake of Galilee is glittering
joyously. That too sets forth the law of life. But the fulfilling of the
law is love: she rises and ministers.
I am tempted to remark in passing, although I shall have better
opportunity of dealing with the matter involved, that there is no sign
of those whom our Lord cures desiring to retain the privileges of
the invalid. The joy of health is labour. He who is restored must be
fellow-worker with God. This woman, lifted out of the whelming sand of
the fever and set upon her feet, hastens to her ministrations. She has
been used to hard work. It is all right now; she must to it again.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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