Victor Austin's "How to be a Sick Christian" in the January 2015 issue of First Things is an immensely practical and helpful bit of pastoral advice. Austin writes as a fairly high-Church Episcopalian, so not all his points of application have direct correspondences in presbyterian faith and practice. However, "call your pastor" applies to pretty much every Christian everywhere, and we presbyterians are well-reminded that liturgical ritual brings a form of comfort different than, but not in opposition to, words grounded in Biblical truth.
This side of glory, illness is not an aberration in our lives: it is a univeral experience which, because we all hope to avoid it, most of us experience as an interruption to, rather than a piece with, our ordinary Christian lives. Until the Son of God, who first came to us in order to share our flesh with us, comes again for us in glory, we must learn to bear and sanctify our fallen-fleshly lives as did he.
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