ILLNESS - MY SIDE AND HIS SIDE

ILLNESS — MY SIDE AND HIS SIDE

The account of your sufferings has affected me much. I can only ask that you may be so near the Lord that you may taste of the great reality that He is outside of all the sorrows here, though, He was in them all, and can sympathise with you in all yours. He can bear you company in them, but He can do more: He can conduct you ^[p. 71] to His own side of things, where there is fulness of joy. The former is what your or my need requires where Christ was, the other is where Christ is, and as He is your life, this is more naturally^† or truly yours than the former, for the former will pass away, the latter remains for ever. We so often limit Him to our own side. Doubtless He allows us in illness to be where there is no footing, in order that we may reach Him and know Him as Peter did when he walked on the water to go to Jesus.

The difference is very marked when we are convalescent. If you have only learned the Lord at your own side, the tendency is to be occupied with yourself, or to seek to be an object of consideration, whereas if you have been led to His side, His interest and concerns will singularly occupy you.

The Lord bless you, and raise you up to be more and more for Him.