You are feeling the weight of the heat, and the heaviness of a body that will not do what you want it to do. I know something of that weariness, and I know too how it presses upon the spirit. The frame is weak, the head throbs, the day stretches out long and difficult, and you wonder how you will manage, not only for yourself, but for your dear wife, your honoured mother, the whole household that looks to you.
There is something in such seasons that leaves us emptied out. And yet it is precisely our emptiness that makes room for His fullness. You know the words, "Of His fullness have all we received." Not of our own strength, not of our own store of energy. We come with our hollow hands, and He fills them. There is no limit to what resides in Christ Jesus for such a moment as this. When you feel most drained, most unfit, most overtaken by the weather and your own frailties, there is grace ready, love ready, a quiet renewing ready from the One who made the sun and who also shades His children from its fiercest stroke.
Do not think He has placed you on a shelf and forgotten you. That is a fear that creeps in when the body languishes, we fancy ourselves overlooked, as though the Lord were busy elsewhere with grander matters. But you are engraved upon the palms of His hands. Not lightly pencilled, but cut deep where no scorching heat can fade the marks. The nail-prints are the remembrance of you before the throne. A mother might forget her child, but He will not forget you. He sees you in this very hour, in that room where you sit feeling poorly, and His heart toward you has not cooled one degree.
And as for the dear ones, your wife, your aged mother, all the circle of your care, remember the pattern of the ark. Noah did not go in alone. The call was, "Come thou and all thy house." The Lord who shelters you has His eye upon the whole company that belongs to you. You may not have strength just now to do much for them, but He has strength enough and to spare. Entrust them into that same gracious keeping. The family in heaven and on earth is one family, and the Head of that family does not let slip the least of His members.
This bodily heaviness will pass. The weather will shift. But while you wait, lean your full weight upon the Spirit who leads the sons of God. He guided your tottering steps to the cross, and He will guide you through every feverish afternoon and every restless night until the journey is done. You are not driven along by some blind force; you are led, tenderly, by the hand of One who knows what it is to inhabit a body and grow weary in the heat.
May the Lord Jesus Himself be the health of your countenance and the refreshment of your soul. May He lay His cool hand upon your brow and grant you rest. May He watch over your wife and your mother and supply every need out of His inexhaustible store. And may you soon know again the lightness of heart that comes when strength returns, not so you may trust yourself, but so you may praise Him all the more who lifts up the faint and girds the weak with power. Unto Him who is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy, to the only wise God our Saviour, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen.