Without a doubt, the most impactful book I read last year was A Book of Comfort for Those in Sickness. I’m sure its significance was partly due to some medical struggles I’ve been having recently, but also simply because life is full of difficulties. We all go through difficult times in these difficult lives in this broken world, and a book like this one delivers comfort rooted in the Comforter. I’ve collected some of my favorite quotes from the book, hoping they comfort you and perhaps compel you to read the book yourself or hand it to someone who could benefit from it.
“God will not send trial without the intention of blessing; therefore, where the trial is great, we may be sure that the blessing intended is great also.”
“Crushed corn makes bread, trodden grapes make wine, pressed olives yield oil, the frankincense that feels the fire, floats upwards in perfumed wreaths toward the sky. The corn of wheat abiding alone is not fruitful; it is when it dies that it enters into the harvest ranks; the branch that bears fruit is pruned that it may bring forth more fruit. So then sick man or woman, do not mope and be down-cast; consider yourself not to be useless.”
“Very often, we have to hunt for our blessings to find them. They are none the worse for that; unless the violet be the worse for having to be looked for amid the leaves. In sickness, little mercies are as sweet and as really great to you, as very great things are to other people in health.”
“The waters of comfort cannot run up the hills of pride; they fall down into the valleys of humility.”
“Your trial cannot be longer than the lasting power of God’s faithfulness, and mercy, and patience, and power. He will be true to you all through it. His patience will not be exhausted, his power will not come short. You will never be left without God. He will be in all your tomorrows, even as he is in your today, and has been in all your yesterdays.”
“We do not see the reasons for pain; we are like children, who for a present advantage would forego any amount of future good; but our sympathizing Father is wise, with a full far-seeing wisdom; and he means us to get great blessing, if only we are willing that he should bless us in his own way.”
“Scripture tells us that God is a jealous God; and he is not only jealous of a man’s worshipping any other God, but of his being put second in anything: and, amongst other things, in comforting.”
“When the sun shines brightly its warm beams draw up the damp fogs from the earth, and they often obscure its lustre. When a lamp is lit, the brighter it shines, the more the insects that gather round it. And so the brighter any truth of God, the more does Satan endeavour to gather about it such mists as will obscure it, if indeed he cannot extinguish it altogether.”
“We may put a penny piece so close to our eyes as to hide out the sun itself; and we may put our little selves into such a position as to blot out God.”
“We must meet Satan’s dark thoughts and suggestions about God with bright thoughts about him.”
“If you want, he will communicate himself to you; and what he communicates must be himself, must be like himself, and therefore it must be good; it will be the giving of himself to you as you are, and with your particular want.”
“You see what he is. All his nature, all his sayings, all his doings argue comfort. Not comfort for the impenitent and the independent, and for those who think they have no need; but for all who wish to be humble, and in want, and to be supplied from a source outside themselves.”
“Be persuaded, then, that God does not make light of your pain. I am comforted in my suffering in the thought that God knows all about it, and feels for it too. Sympathy is a great balm; and you have the sympathy of God.”
“Every pain borne, is one pain less to bear.”
“No pain is aimless, if only we will see that it has a design. God means it to work blessing. He means that it should leave something behind it. Pain has its place in the plan of our life, ever since the fall.”
“The good God, who has sent you your sickness, is the one who has ordained that nothing shall be useless.”
“Cheer up; God has a place for you. God has something for you to do, and to be, in his kingdom. You are no poor trodden-down creature; you have a place and a name before God.”
“Sick man, you have a place of usefulness for God, not the old place, but his place–the place which is best in the eyes of the all-wise one.”
“The all-wise God would not do so foolish a thing as to put you where you could be of no use.”
“Under any circumstances you may be of great use by being contented and cheerful in your trouble. Those around you will see that God sustains you, and will bless him and glorify him, and perhaps learn to trust him too.”
“No state but that of living in impenitence and sin, and away from God, is to be absolutely comfortless.”
“You shall never learn anything bad about yourself, without learning something correspondingly good about Christ. You are none the worse, really, for finding out that you are worse than you thought. It is only that more light has come into your heart; and you see more than you did before.”
“Humble yourself–the lower the better; but always, with Christ before you.”
“Humility without Christ will make you weak; with him, it will make you strong. Our own unworthiness would crush us, unless it went hand in hand with the worthiness in him.”
“I must believe that infinite wisdom has been at work to give me the thing best for me. Why it is best for me I know not; enough that, if it comes from God, it must be so.”
“There are many things in the world which are good in themselves, but are not good for particular persons.”
“If I believe in God, I comfort myself in the assurance that I have the lot that is best for me.”
“We may be sure we shall do best for his glory and for our own happiness in the lot which infinite wisdom and love have pointed out for us.”
“We know by every day’s experience that we can do what in the aggregate is a great deal, if only we do it bit by bit. And it is bit by bit that we are to bear our long affliction. Never reach forth your hand for tomorrow’s trouble. Grace is only for today’s. You should not bring upon yourselves a need for which there is no promise of supply.”
“If now we have a look forward, by and by we shall have a look backward, upon all the way by which we have been led. Even now, when we look back upon what we would call long periods, how short they seem, although they are comparatively recent! How much shorter will they appear when they are looked back upon from the standpoint of eternity!”
“To be alone in the fearful sense of the word is one thing; to be alone with God is another.”
“There are two ways of meeting the unknown–either by not thinking about it at all, or by thinking and leaving it all to God.”
“A home, and not a grave, is the true ending of our earthly life; we depart, not to be, as we say, ‘dead’, but really to live.”
