A young man lies in a quiet room in a big hospital. He is in constant pain, desperately ill, discouraged because his life of glad service for God, and youth seems to be ended by his ill health. And he is grieving for the loneliness and suffering of the many others under the same hospital roof. I share with him the picture of the Saviour of the world, suffering agony upon the Cross, yet thoughtlessly for the suffering of others. And I ask him to pray frequently for the others in the hospital—

“Lord Jesus, most pitiful Saviour, I beseech Thee by the loneliness of Thy suffering upon the Cross, be nigh all who are desolate in pain or in sorrow today, and by the magic of Thy Presence, transform their loneliness into comfort and consolation and holy fellowship with Thee; in Thy dear Name I ask it.”

The praying for others brought a sense of Christ’s presence to him. And I showed him pictures that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John had given me of the Healing Christ restoring sufferers to useful lives. He let these pictures of the ever-present Great Physician sink into his heart, and he was himself restored to glad service.

A woman is tired and sick in mind. I find her weeping hysterically, in the depths of discouragement and bitterness. I sing softly to her a verse from the English Church Army,

Her sobs stop before I finish. We look together at pictures of Jesus as the Day Spring from on High, giving light to those who sit in darkness and guiding their feet into the way of peace. And the woman was “made every whit whole.”

A woman lies in a hospital, burning up with fever, her left hand and arm swollen to three times the normal size with some obscure disease considered incurable by medical science. She does not know that plans for amputation have been abandoned because it was considered even the amputation could not save her life and so she was to be spared seeing her body mutilated. I </WRAP>

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