Why Sickness?

Observe here how one wave follows another. After Epaphroditus had endured a long and dangerous voyage, he meets with a long and dangerous sickness. It is the nature of us. Let us not dream of any immunity. God's children are subject to sicknesses while they live. Daily experience proves it. Their heaven is not here. As the outward man is weakened, so is the inward man renewed (2 Cor. 4:16). For by sickness we are put in mind to make even our accounts with God, and by it he also makes the pleasures of this world to be bitter to us, that we may the more willingly part with them.
(1) God often allows his children to come to extremities, yea, even to death itself. He allowed Hezekiah, Job, Jonah, David, Daniel, and the 'three in the furnace' to run into the jaws of death. By this it comes to pass that when all natural and ordinary means fail God's children, their trust is not placed on the means, but on some more durable and constant help, upon God's own good will and power. God is jealous of our affections.
(2) God allows his children to fall into extremities, to the end that having experienced God's helping hand in them, we might come to rely more confidently on him in all adversities. He allows us to receive the sentence of death in us, to the end that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God (2 Cor. 1:9). For God is never nearer than in extremities.
(3) God allows us to fall into extremities that he might try what is in us, and that he might exercise the graces in us. Afflictions are called trials because they try our graces. For if it were not for them, we should not know what faith, patience, hope, or grace are.
(4) Sickness causes the communion between God and us to be more sincere. For when there is nothing to rely on, that is when we come sensibly and experimentally to taste, see, and feel God's comfort. When ordinary helps fail, God's help begins.

Devotional Readings taken from Puritan Richard Sibbes 'Refreshment for the Soul.'
Of the Providence of God, Works, vol. 5, pp. 40-41
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