‘Comfort ye, comfort ye my people.’ This is a divine charge laid upon all who have tasted that the Lord is gracious, and I gladly take it up for your dear mother in this hour of her pain. A severe toothache, dimness of eyesight, and the burning of acid reflux, these are not trifles in the physical frame. Yet remember, the very leaves of the Tree of Life are for healing. The least things about Christ carry restoring virtue. Even this present suffering can be touched by the hem of His garment.
Do not measure the Lord’s power by the scale of the ailment. If He is Master over devils and the raging sea, shall He not command a nerve to cease its throbbing or quiet the inward fire? The blueness of a wound cleanses away evil, and often these bodily griefs are but the Father’s sharper tools to carve more of His image in us. But He does not leave us without a peculiar comfort. His Word quickens us, and in that quickening, the soul is lifted above the present agony. The Spirit applies the promise, and the heart finds a peace that the world cannot give.
For your mother’s comfort, lay hold upon this: she is not forgotten. The Lord sees her and knows every pang, as surely as Peter was searched by those eyes of omniscient love. And I would speak a special word to mothers. Your position is lofty and responsible. In your quiet service, in your patient endurance, you are doing a work for His name as surely as any public preacher. Let this cheer her heart: even the bruised reed He will not break; the smoking flax He will not quench.
Pray, then, that the Lord would either lift the trial or supply the strength to bear it. ‘Lord, if it be possible, let this cup pass,’ yet if it must not, pray for that other form of comfort, that she may be able to bear it. He is faithful and will with the temptation also make a way to escape. I trust that soon, by the lapse of time and the tender mercy of God, she shall forget this misery, remembering it only as waters that pass away. Until then, may our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and God our Father, comfort her heart and establish her in every good word and work.