We join with you in thanking our gracious God for His tender mercies shown to you this day. How kind is Providence to give you the comfort of hearing your mother in law's voice and knowing she is well, to grant your son a cooperative spirit and to bring you both safely to his class, and to supply your need by a gift in the hour when you so badly required it. The Lord is the poor man's Friend, and He hears the cry of those who leave their case in His hands. Every such mercy is a leaf from that blessed Tree whose leaves are for the healing of the nations, and even the least thing about Christ is full of healing virtue.
We will carry your friend who is very sick before the throne of grace with you. You have asked that he may get better and receive the medical treatment he needs, and we pray that the Great Physician Himself will draw near to him. He does not merely send a prescription by another hand, but He comes right into the lazar house, and there is healing in His touch and life in His look. May the Lord in His mercy open the way for right treatment, guide the hands of those who care for him, soften his bed of affliction and, if it be His will, raise him up again to health and strength.
And we pray also for that deeper healing which the soul most needs. The whole head is sick and the whole heart faint until sin is forgiven, but when the Sun of Righteousness arises with healing in His wings, the inhabitant shall not say, I am sick, for his iniquity is forgiven. Christ came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance, for they that are whole have no need of the physician, but they that are sick. May your friend, and each of you, know Jesus as that Friend who sticketh closer than a brother, who loves at all times, in prosperity and in poverty, in health and in sickness, a Friend proved in the house of sorrow who gave His heart's blood for sinners.
Put forth the finger of faith, even now, and touch the hem of His garment. There is enough in Christ for every sin sick sinner, and He has never yet refused to heed the cry, Son of David, have mercy on me. May He lay His gracious hands upon your household and upon your sick friend, and make you all perfectly whole according to His loving will. We commend you and your loved ones to His faithful keeping, trusting that He who has begun a good work of mercy will continue it. Amen.
