There is a sleep that is the gift of God to His beloved, a deep rest in the hollow of His hand, when He makes the mind content and the body secure. Yet He does not give this precious gift while His children forget the schoolhouse of affliction. Your son lies wakeful in his pain, and you are tempted to ask only for physical ease. But learn from those who slept when they should have watched, the disciples in Gethsemane, heavy-eyed while their Lord sweat great drops of blood. Their sleep was a reproach, not a blessing. Let this sleeplessness become a holy wakefulness for your son, a season when the soul cries out to God because the body refuses its repose. The Lord sometimes permits the eyes to be held open that the heart may be more completely opened before Him.
But the same gracious hand allows this wound that it might tenderly press you both toward the healing tree. The leaves of that tree are for the healing of the nations, and the very least thing about Christ Jesus carries virtue to restore. Do not think the healing power of the Lord is far from your son because the night hours stretch long and the frame aches without relief. In the Gospels, the healing influence was conspicuously present when Christ was teaching. Set your son to listen to the Master’s voice in the Scriptures; place him like a potted plant beneath the shower of the Word, where faith comes by hearing. It may be that while he meditates on the pardoning love of the Saviour, he will find that pardon and healing are placed in happy conjunction. The Sun of Righteousness has risen with healing in His wings, and His first word to the restless soul is often, "Son, be of good cheer; your sins are forgiven you."
Look therefore beyond the throbbing of the frame to the state of the man within. For man is a double being, composed of body and soul, and the Lord sometimes breaks the outward shell to reach the inward spirit. Let your son not say in his anguish, "I have no time to think upon eternal things because of this pain." Rather, let the pain be a messenger sent in mercy, a lancet in the hand of the heavenly Physician who wounds only that He may bind up. There is an abundance of healing in Jesus Christ, and what seems a little thing, a simple prayer offered in the night watches, a sigh of dependence, a laying hold of the hem of His garment, will prove to be a full cure. The healing leaves change the very life blood, alter the spirits, and make the nature other than it was. You ask for his back to be mended, and well you should, for we quickly care for bodily diseases. But plead with the Lord to do a thorough work, to heal the root of the matter, that when sleep returns to his eyes it may be the peculiar sleep given to the beloved, the sleep of security in Christ, of contentment with the Father's will, and of rest from the weary labour of self-dependence.
Yet while you wait for the full outshining of healing power, count it no strange thing if the answer tarries. The body of a believer sometimes suffers chastisement unknown to the outside world, as it was with the Corinthians who slept in weakness because of their misbehaviour. Let there be a searching of heart, a turning from every rough place where the feet were lamed unawares. Make his path straight, let there be no unnecessary stumbling-block of doctrine or practice to cause him pain. If you would open the door for the Great Physician to enter, preach the gospel plainly to your own soul and to his. A true healing is always linked with obedient faith, for unbelief restrains the hand of God and keeps back the blessing. Lay your son, like the man taken with palsy, right in the presence of Jesus, hoping and expecting, through the energy of a living faith, that forgiveness first and then healing will be his portion. The Saviour has not lost His ancient power, nor does He turn a deaf ear to a parent's cry. He came to heal the broken-hearted, and while He binds up the wounded frame, He can fill the wakeful mind with such sweet communion that the night becomes a place of song. Wait on Him who giveth His beloved sleep in His own time, and rest in this: that your son, body and soul, is precious in His sight.