Serving by Suffering

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · Mar 31, 1904

Serving by Suffering

SICKNESS is discouraging. It is disheartening not to be able to do the heroic things that the spirit yearns to do. Life seems to be useless. The days seem lost in which no active service can be done for the Master. Sometimes persons suffering thus from illness, laid aside or broken so as to be equal to but little, lose out of the heart the joy, the peace, the hope, the enthusiasm, and become depressed, unhappy, cast down, sometimes almost despairing.

But this is not victorious Christian life. The lesson for such is that the noblest thing in life is always the doing of God's will. That is greater than any heroism, greater than the largest service one can render, greater than any toil and sacrifice. Let us accept our limitations. Let us not repine and chafe when God shuts us in a sick-room. Do not let us fret and waste our life in needless discontent when we can not do the things we want to do, and that seem should be done by us. The highest duty of our life amid the limitations of ill health or physical feebleness is to keep our spiritual condition right.—Selected.