God and Suffering : Illness

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In our Christian Book Store online, you will find a great variety of books compiled or written by Edwin and Lillian Harvey. Among them, is the ¨Call Back Series.¨Shortly after they began to compile books from their extensive files, Edwin and Lillian Harvey realized the need to address the subject of God and suffering. Why did He allow suffering into the lives of the saints? How did they cope? What fruit did it produce in their lives? What forms of suffering do we, as God’s children and members of the human race, have to go through?

Perusing their files, they discovered a poem that inspired the title for these books on this subject of God and Suffering entitled ¨Call Back.¨ Here it is:

Call Back

If you have gone a little way ahead of me, call back—
‘Twill cheer my heart and help my feet along the stony track;
And if, perchance, faith’s light is dim, because the oil is low,
Your call will guide my lagging course as wearily I go.

Call back and tell me that He went with you into the storm;
Call back, and say He kept you when the forest’s roots were torn;
That when the heavens thundered and the earthquake shook the hill,
He bore you up and held you when the very air was still.

O Friend, call back and tell me, for I cannot see your face;
They say it glows with triumph and your feet bound in the race;
But there are mists between us, and my spirit eyes are dim,
And I cannot see the glory, though I long for word of Him.

But if you’ll say He heard you when your prayer was but a cry,
And if you’ll say He saw you through the night’s sin-darkened sky—
If you have gone a little way ahead, O friend, call back—
‘Twill cheer my heart and help my feet along the stony track.

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God and Suffering : Illness : Catherine Booth : Mrs. Howard Taylor : Elizabeth Fry.

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The first book Edwin and Lillian Harvey compiled on “God and Suffering” was “Call Back No. One” or “Illness.” This is available in our Christian Book Store. It explores the lives of saints in the past and how they coped with illness which God allowed into their lives. What happened when they were not healed? Were they plunged into despair? Did they meekly accept their lot? 

In perusing the lives of saints, Edwin and Lillian discovered that not only did they learn to profit from their experiences but they “call back” to those of us who are going through similar trials, to tell us to keep the faith, to make it to the end.

If they have triumphed, then we can too. And so their voices call back to us, encouraging us not to be overwhelmed.

The book opens with extracts from the life of Catherine Booth, the Mother of the Salvation Army who battled with ill health all her life. “Try to rest in His will, dear friend,” she writes, “because there is nowhere else to rest. He knows why these wearisome months of suffering are appointed to me, and amidst all my depression, and sometimes distress, the devil shall not drive me from this one refuge—that He does all in love. I know it, I believe it, and pray that I may not frustrate His design.” Illness page 8.

Years later, another of God’s saints, Mrs. Howard Taylor, when laid aside for weeks on account of ill health, writes in a similar strain: “I do not know just how, but in the suffering and the quietness (enforced) of the past two weeks, He has taken possession afresh of my whole being, so that everything looks different and nothing is difficult any more.” Ibid page 51.

Elizabeth Fry, the fearless Quakeress who did much to improve conditions in England’s prisons, also found herself laid aside from her labors through ill health. “I am permitted to think,” she writes, “that perhaps this state of bodily infirmity is permitted for my mental rest—that I may retire a little from the world and its business.” Ibid page 57.

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