Bible
I do not
know what ails you, but God’s Word is certainly a good medicine. I read the following story which illustrates
this point.
A lady,
who tells the story herself, went to consult a famous physician about her health. She was a woman of nervous temperament, whose
troubles – she had many – had worried and excited her to such a pitch that the
strain threatened her physical strength and even her reason. She gave the doctor a summary of her
symptoms, and answered his questions, only to be astonished at this brief
prescription at the end of his diagnosis:
“Madam, what you need is to read your Bible more.”
“But, doctor,” began the bewildered patient.
“Go home,
and read your Bible an hour a day,” the great man reiterated, with kindly
authority. “Then come back to me a month
from today.” And he bowed her out
without a possibility of further protest.
At first
this patient was inclined to be angry.
Then she reflected that, at least the prescription was not an expensive
one. Besides, it certainly had been a
long time since she had read the Bible regularly, she reflected with a pang of
conscience. Worldly cares had crowded
out prayer and Bible study for years; and, though she would have resented being
called an irreligious woman, she had undoubtedly become a most careless
Christian. She went home and set herself
consciously to try the physician’s remedy.
In one month she went back to his office.
“Well,”
the doctor said, smiling as he looked into her face, “I see you are an obedient
patient, and have taken my prescription faithfully. Do you feel as if you need any other medicine
now?”
“No,
doctor, I don’t,” she said honestly. “I
feel like a different person. But how
did you know that was just what I needed?”
For answer,
the physician turned to his desk. There,
worn and marked, lay an open Bible.
“Madam,”
he said with deep earnestness, “if I were to omit my daily reading of this
Book, I should lose my greatest source of strength and skill. I never go to an operation without finding
help in its pages. Your case called not
for medicine, but for sources of peace and strength outside your own mind, and
I showed you my own prescription, and I knew it would cure.”
“Yet I confess, doctor,” said his patient, “that I came very near not
taking it.”
What to do:
✞ When you are bruised spiritually, when you are wounded emotionally, when you are ill physically, try God’s Word as a medicine.
