Hospitals are interesting institutions. They wake up their patients in the middle of the night to give them sleeping pills. They refuse to give pain medication when it’s asked for and then insist on giving it later when the patient says it isn’t needed. They charge a very high rate for room, board and care and then for days won’t give the patient anything to eat. Then, when they bring the first food, it is Jell-O, which is even more nervous than the patient. They clothe the patients in semi-private gowns and make modesty difficult by marching them up and down the halls with more paraphernalia hanging on them than a Christmas tree.
Hospitals have been known to cut off the wrong leg, pull the life support on the wrong patient and operate on the wrong person. Fortunately, such mistakes are rare but it does remind us how prone we humans are to making mistakes.
Thankfully, we worship a Heavenly Father who does not make mistakes. His Son tells us that the very hairs of our head are all numbered. He knows when we sit down and when we stand up. He is acquainted with all our ways, and our thoughts are known to Him even before we have thought them. This knowledge overwhelmed the psalmist, who declared: “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me.” “I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”
Realizing that God does not make mistakes, we can accept with more grace the trials and afflictions that do come our way. We are told concerning the Lord Jesus Christ that, “though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered.” If Jesus learned by suffering, we should accept ours, realizing that, “our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.”
If we truly believe that “all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose,” then we can accept the things that happen to us. We realize that God will not try us beyond which “we are able to bear” and a loving Father really does know what is best for us, even if it should be a “thorn in the flesh to buffet us lest we should be exalted above measure.”
With Paul, let us learn to say, “Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ’s sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong.”
Following surgery, we certainly do feel weak and we can surely say that we feel a thorn in the side, although this was not what Paul meant when he spoke of the thorn in the flesh. We need the return of the Great Physician to this earth to permanently cure all the ills that befall us.
Until he comes, we should be thankful for the medical help that God has made possible for us to receive. Let us not take for granted the health we have but thank God for it. All too often, we do not appreciate what we have until it is in danger of being lost. Accepting with thanks the health we have, let us resolve I to use whatever strength we may possess to serve our Master.
We join Paul in declaring, “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.”
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One