From Horatius Bonar: When God's Children Suffer

Sickness prostrates us. It cuts into the very centre of our carnal nature; it exposes in all their deformity "the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life". What vanity is seen in these upon a sickbed! These are our three idols; and these, sickness dashes down into the dust. 

Sickness takes us aside and sets us alone with God. We are taken into His private chamber, and there He converses with us face to face. The world is far off, our relish for it is gone, and we are alone with God. Many are the words of grace and truth which He then speaks to us. All our former props are taken away, and we must now lean on God alone. The things of earth are felt to be vanity; man's help useless. Man's praise and sympathy desert us; we are cast wholly upon God, that we may learn that HIs praise and His sympathy are enough. "If it were not for my pain," says one, "I should spend less time with God. If I had not been kept awake with pain, I should have lost one of the sweetest experiences I ever had in my life. The disorder of my body is the very help I want from God; and if it does its work before it lays me in the dust, it will raise me up to heaven." It was thus that Job was "chastened upon his bed with pain, and the multitude of his bones with strong pain", that after being tried he might "come forth as gold" (Job 33:19; 23:10).

Sickness teaches that activity of service is not the only way in which God is glorified. "They also serve who stand and wait." Active duty is that which man judges most acceptable; but God shows us that in bearing and suffering He is also glorified. Perhaps we were pursuing a course of our own and required to be arrested. Perhaps we were too much harassed by a bustling world and needed retirement, yet could find no way of obtaining it till God laid us down, and drew us aside into a desert place, because of the multitude pressing upon us.

None of the family rods is more in use than this, sometimes falling lightly on us, at other times more heavily. Let us kiss the rod. Let us open our mouth wide to the blessing, seeking so to profit by each bodily ailment, slight or severe, that it may bring forth in us the peacable fruits of righteousness. "I know," says one, "of no greater blessing than health, except pain and sickness."