God and Suffering : Illness : Francis Ridley Havergal.

In the book Illness, Edwin and Lillian Harvey have researched the lives of saints to discover how they coped with physical suffering. It is the first in the series on God and Suffering known as “The Call Back Series.” In it, you will find that, together with other saints of the past, Frances Ridley Havergal calls back to us through her pain and suffering. “Pain,” she writes, “is but one of His graving tools, producing the likeness to Jesus for which we long. . . .I think one must pass through it for one’s self before one can actually realize the actual blessing of suffering. Meanwhile, you may well take the testimony of those who have. Its conscious effects are to give one deeper feeling of one’s entire weakness and helplessness (a lesson which we are all slow to learn in health), and of the real nothingness of earthly aims and comforts, and the fleetingness . . .of everything except God. Then, it drives one close to Him each moment; one cannot bear it even for one moment alone; one must lean and cling.

“I take this pain, Lord Jesus
From Thine own hand,
The strength to bear it bravely
Thou wilt command.
I am too weak for effort
So let me rest,
In hush of sweet submission,
On Thine own breast.

“I take this pain, Lord Jesus,
As proof indeed
That thou art watching closely
My truest need:
That Thou, my Good Physician,
Art watching still;
That all Thy own good pleasure
Thou wilt fulfill.

“’This Thy dear hand, O Savior,
That presseth sore,
The hand that bears the nail-prints
Forevermore,
And now beneath its shadow,
Hidden by Thee,
The pressure only tells me
Thou lovest me.”
—F.R. Havergal (Illness pp. 23-24).