A sick person shouldn’t have to make you feel better about being sick.
Yet that can become part of the job. Someone offers a little encouragement, and now the person who can barely get through the day has to smile and say how much it helped.
“God won’t give you more than you can handle.”
It sounds kind. Often it is meant kindly. But follow it into the room after the visitor leaves. If God has measured this against your strength and decided you can take it, what does it mean when you can’t?
Now you have the illness and the suspicion that you are handling it badly. Apparently somebody with enough faith would be managing better.
Before we put that on a sick person, we ought to see whether God said it.
Here is 1 Corinthians 10:13:
“There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.”
The promise is attached to temptation. Read the paragraph around it. Paul warns against idolatry, fornication, tempting Christ, and murmuring. The next verse tells them to flee from idolatry.
Trouble can bring temptation with it. Being ill does not make sin harmless. But a promise that God provides a way to endure temptation is not a promise that your body and nerves can carry every affliction without giving out.
Paul knew the difference. In his next letter to the same church, he wrote this:
“For we would not, brethren, have you ignorant of our trouble which came to us in Asia, that we were pressed out of measure, above strength, insomuch that we despaired even of life:
But we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead:”
That is 2 Corinthians 1:8-9. “Above strength.” There it is, in the man’s own account. He thought they were going to die. He wanted the church to know how bad it had been.
Under the rule we keep repeating, Paul would have to be doing something wrong. He was supposed to be able to handle it.
Instead, he tells them where the trouble brought his trust: away from himself, to God who raises the dead. That is what Paul says about his suffering. It does not make us qualified to stand beside somebody else’s bed and explain exactly what God is doing to them.
We can leave what we don’t know alone. We have enough here to stop treating exhaustion as evidence against a person’s faith.
And Paul did not finish by telling everybody to stand back while he learned his lesson. A little farther down he wrote, “Ye also helping together by prayer for us” (verse 11).
They had something to do.
So do we. Galatians 6:2 says:
“Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.”
That gives the visitor a job. You don’t have to explain the illness before you can bring supper. Ask whether they need a ride. If they want company, sit down without making them keep a conversation going. Pray for them, and don’t make them produce an encouraging update before you pray again.
If you need words, “I’m sorry. I don’t know why this is happening. I’m here” will do. Then mean the last part.
The person in the bed should not have to comfort everybody who comes to comfort them.
P.S. Before you pass along a Bible promise, read what it is actually promising. That is the habit behind The Plain Bible Manual. The Complete Edition preorder includes the current 2.0 manual, workbook, and prompts now; the new edition follows when it is finished. Get the current files and preorder here.
