His flesh shall be fresher than a child’s: he shall return to the days of his youth:
God speaks once, yea twice, yet man does not perceive it, speaking by His Word and by visions and dreams, and when man does not heed He chastens him with pain upon his bed and with strong pain in the multitude of his bones. That chastening emaciates the body, makes the bones stick out, and brings the sufferer near to death and the grave and the pit. Such affliction of the righteous does not come by accident or chance, because the Lord reigns and controls it. Angels permit Satan's attacks only when the harm can be overruled for good, and He shares in the suffering, so in disease the sufferer is dealing with God and not the devil, with God Himself at work doing the kindest thing possible in view of His perfect knowledge of circumstances and need.
God permits this only after His warning voice has spoken in unheard whispers, to speak louder through affliction when prosperity failed to teach. He does this to open dull ears, to withdraw man from proud purposes, to mold character, to correct him that he may return to the path of right, and to preserve him from destruction by bringing back his soul from the pit to be enlightened with the light of the living. He does this also to teach him more truth, including through a messenger who explains God's uprightness, that the same kind hand that gave roses now gives the bitter cup. When the sufferer learns, God is gracious and finds a ransom to deliver from the pit, begetting a new life in the heart.
The verse promises God's ultimate care to restore the sufferer to childlike freshness and youthful vigor and health, healing the wound and making whole. This belongs to the book's lesson about suffering and God's purpose, not to a rule that every person who suffers is under God's displeasure. That restoration comes when the work is done and the sufferer repents and cooperates, and where His name can be honored thereby, God will bless what is done for recovery. He will not lay on man more than is right but will withdraw the affliction, and the renewal actually makes up the years eaten by sin, erasing even the physical trace of decades of sinful life.
Pain is therefore God's voice and chastening for restoration, not an enemy to be hushed and stifled with coal-tar products like phenacetin and acetanilid. Beyond death, the verse also promises renewal in the land of endless years where crystal streams flow over golden sands, where the old grow young again with renewed bodies. So aged hands now wrinkled and feeble and marked by time and pain and at last folded in the grave will bear palms of victory and be clasped again youthful forever.
God speaks once, yea twice, yet man does not perceive it, speaking by His Word and by visions and dreams, and when man does not heed He chastens him with pain upon his bed and with strong pain in the multitude of his bones. That chastening emaciates the body, makes the bones stick out, and brings the sufferer near to death and the grave and the pit. Such affliction of the righteous does not come by accident or chance, because the Lord reigns and controls it. Angels permit Satan's attacks only when the harm can be overruled for good, and He shares in the suffering, so in disease the sufferer is dealing with God and not the devil, with God Himself at work doing the kindest thing possible in view of His perfect knowledge of circumstances and need.
God permits this only after His warning voice has spoken in unheard whispers, to speak louder through affliction when prosperity failed to teach. He does this to open dull ears, to withdraw man from proud purposes, to mold character, to correct him that he may return to the path of right, and to preserve him from destruction by bringing back his soul from the pit to be enlightened with the light of the living. He does this also to teach him more truth, including through a messenger who explains God's uprightness, that the same kind hand that gave roses now gives the bitter cup. When the sufferer learns, God is gracious and finds a ransom to deliver from the pit, begetting a new life in the heart.
The verse promises God's ultimate care to restore the sufferer to childlike freshness and youthful vigor and health, healing the wound and making whole. This belongs to the book's lesson about suffering and God's purpose, not to a rule that every person who suffers is under God's displeasure. That restoration comes when the work is done and the sufferer repents and cooperates, and where His name can be honored thereby, God will bless what is done for recovery. He will not lay on man more than is right but will withdraw the affliction, and the renewal actually makes up the years eaten by sin, erasing even the physical trace of decades of sinful life.
Pain is therefore God's voice and chastening for restoration, not an enemy to be hushed and stifled with coal-tar products like phenacetin and acetanilid. Beyond death, the verse also promises renewal in the land of endless years where crystal streams flow over golden sands, where the old grow young again with renewed bodies. So aged hands now wrinkled and feeble and marked by time and pain and at last folded in the grave will bear palms of victory and be clasped again youthful forever.