II. To the Sick Daughter
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Dear friend,
I have had you in my thoughts many times since I learned of your illness. It has been very sweet to speak your name to God in prayer again and again, asking him to bless you, comfort you, strengthen you, to make the way bright and beautiful for you. I am sure that this prayer has been answered. You have been sick through the winter — but you have had Christ very close beside you.
There is a very sweet verse in one of the psalms which says: "Into your hand, I commend my spirit." Our Lord used these words when he was about to die on the cross. They are good words, therefore, to use when one is about to leave this world. That is all death is to a Christian — merely breathing the spirit out from the body — into the hands of the heavenly Father. There certainly can be nothing to dread in such an experience, and this committal is a very beautiful one indeed.
But David, in writing these words, did not think of death, but of life. He commended his life into the hands of God. He could not see what lay before him. He knew not what the experiences of the coming days would be. But he knew that God understood it all and would care for him. So he committed everything to him. This is what you have been doing with your life all these years. This is what you do every morning when you wake — commit yourself into God's hands for the little day, with all its experiences, knowing that God will keep you and bless you.
It is very sweet to think of the hands of God. How gentle they are! The gentlest hands sometimes give pain — but the hands of Christ are always infinitely gentle. I remember reading of an Indian child who came in one day from the field with a hurt bird. Showing it to her grandfather, she said: "See! I have a bird. It is mine." The old man asked her where she got the bird, and she told him that she had found it in the wheat field. Its wing had been hurt, and it could not fly. He bade her carry the bird back to the place where she had found it, and lay it down on the ground. "It is not your bird," he said. "It is God's bird. If you keep it — it will die — but if you take it back and leave it in God's hands — it will live. God knows best how to heal a bird's hurt wing."
I have always thought of this as a beautiful illustration, showing the difference between human hands and God's hands. Our friends love us and they do all they possibly can for us. But in all the world there are no hands, not even a mother's, that are so gentle as God's, or in which our lives are so safe. It is very sweet, therefore, to trust ourselves, with all our pain and weakness and suffering — in the gentle hands of Christ.
These hands are not only gentle — but also strong. They are able to do for you everything you need to have done. These are the hands which have made all things in the universe and which upbear all things. Surely they are strong enough, therefore, to hold you up, and to keep you ever in safety.
But I must not write more to you — you are not strong enough, I fear, to read or to hear a long letter. Let me, therefore, assure you of loving interest and of much prayer these days, that God may sweetly bless you.
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