December 2 Daily Devotional

Bible Verse

"The LORD sustains him on his sickbed; in his illness you turn all his bed" (Ps. 41:3).

Devotional

What a view this touching expression gives of the consideration of our heavenly Father—stooping down to the couch of his sick child, softening the sickness by a thousand nameless kindnesses, alleviating suffering, and mitigating pain.

Would you learn the Lord's touching tenderness towards his people? Go to the sick chamber of one whom he loves! Ten thousand books will not teach you what that one visit will. Listen to the testimony of the emaciated sufferer—"His left hand is under my head, and his right hand embraces me!" (Song 2:6).

What more can we desire? What stronger witness do we ask? What! Is Jesus there? Is his loving bosom the pillow, and is his encircling arm the support, of the drooping patient? Is Christ both the doctor and the nurse? Is his finger upon that fluttering pulse, does his hand administer that drink, does he adjust that pillow and make all that bed in sickness? Even so. Oh, what glory beams around the sick one whom Jesus loves!

Trace it, too, in the grace that he measures out to the weakened sufferer. The season of sickness is a season, in the Christian's life, of especial and great grace.

Many a child of God knew his adoption only faintly, and his interest in Christ only imperfectly, until then. His Christianity was always uncertain, his evidences vague, and his soul unhealthy. Living, perhaps, in the turmoil of the secular world, or amid the excitement of the religious world, he knew but little of communion with his own heart, or of converse with the heart of God. No time was extracted from other, all-absorbing engagements and consecrated to the high and hallowed purposes of self-examination, meditation, reading, and prayer—elements entering essentially and deeply into the advancement of the life of God in the soul of man.

But sickness has come, and with it some of the most valuable and holy blessings of his life. A degree of grace, answerable to all the holy and blessed ends for which it was sent, is imparted. And now, how resplendent with the glory of Divine grace has that chamber of sickness become!

We trace it in the spirit and conduct of that pale, languid sufferer. See the patience with which he possesses his soul, the fervor with which he kisses the rod, the meekness with which he bows to the stroke, the subduing, softening, humbling of his spirit. These days of weariness and pain, these nights of sleeplessness and exhaustion, how slowly, how tediously they draw along! And yet not an impatient sigh, nor a murmuring breath, nor an unsubmissive expression breaks from the quivering lip. This is not natural. This is above nature. What but Divine and especial grace could effect it? Oh, how is the Son of God, in his fullness of grace and truth, glorified thereby!

In the hour of trial,
Jesus, plead for me;
lest by base denial
I depart from thee;
when thou seest me waver,
with a look recall,
nor for fear or favor
suffer me to fall.

(Jas. Montgomery, 1834; St. 1, line 2, alt.)

Be sure to read the Preface by Octavius Winslow and A Note from the Editor by Larry E. Wilson.

Larry Wilson is an ordained minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. In addition to having served as the General Secretary of the Committee on Christian Education of the OPC (2000–2004) and having written a number of articles and booklets (such as God's Words for Worship and Why Does the OPC Baptize Infants) for New Horizons and elsewhere, he has pastored OPC churches in Minnesota, Indiana, and Ohio. We are grateful to him for his editing of Morning Thoughts, the OPC Daily Devotional for 2025.