Oct – 17 – WAS SICK!

“I was sick and you visited me” (Mathew 25:36).

Our heart melts when we meet the patients during the hospital visits. Further, it will be a heart-breaking experience to see the patients lying as orphans with no one to take care.

Many patients will not have bed facility there. They will be lying either in the veranda or somewhere else on the floor. They will be struggling without sufficient food and no one to attend on. This pitiable condition will be heart-melting indeed.

Once, a servant of God was suffering from high fever. Despite this bad and unstable health, he stood and preached in a convention meeting. At the end of meeting he went to bed unable to bear the severity of the fever. At that time, one person came to meet him.

The visitor told the servant of God, “You being a servant of God, how is it you are getting affected by ill-health? Your faith is not strong. God, Holy Spirit and Angels never fall sick. Even during the days in the world, Jesus Christ never became sick. When it is so, how is it you are on the bed like this?” Thus he went on talking harshly.

The servant of God asked the visitor, “Don’t you know that Jesus Christ was also sick. He also was struggling with ill health.” This statement made the visiting youngster angry. He stubbornly told that Jesus never felt sick. The servant of God opened his Bible and read the verse vide Mathew 25:36. Did not Jesus say ‘I was sick and you visited me’, he asked? With this, the visitor became silent.

In the Scripture, we find many saints and servants of God being sick. “Elisha had become sick” (II Kings 13:14). “For indeed he (Epaphroditus) was sick almost unto death” (Philippians 2:27). “Now a certain man was sick, Lazarus of Bethany” (John 11:1). “But it happened in those days that she (Tabitha) became sick” (Acts 9:37).

All things work together for good to those who love God. The children of God even change their time of sickness into a pleasant one.

Dear children of God, when becoming sick, one should know whether it has come to correct you (Hebrew 12:6) and evaluate oneself and correct the things which are wrong and cast out the unwanted ones. If you come to know that the sickness is due to satan, oppose him. He will run away.

To meditate: “He will bless your bread and your water. And I will take sickness away from the midst of you” (Exodus 23:25).