Quotes & Sayings About Illness And God

First things first, I'm going to tell you why I'm fat, because I actually get this question a lot, much in the way people are asked how they got into live-action role playing or funeral home cosmetology. The answer I'd like to give to people who ask me that question is that God made us all different, and she made some people round-shaped, like me, and some people asshole-shaped, like you. Too direct? Fine, here's the deal.

Most kids inherit their best qualities from their parents. I inherited mental illness and fat thighs. Oh, and astigmatism and course body hair. — Brittany Gibbons

Preaching a man a sermon with a broken head and telling him to be right with God is equal to telling a man with a broken leg to get up and run a race. — Richard Baxter

It was she who had led him to find himself. Picasso had risen to the challenge God had placed before him without even realizing it. In spite of his fears, in the face of her lengthy illness, and now her impending death, he had not abandoned her. Her steadfast love had helped him to become a noble man, and to be there for her in a way he had not been able to be for Conchita. — Anne Girard

At other times, He may answer the prayer differently than you wanted Him to or expected Him to. He doesn't stop the storm or take away the problem or heal the illness, but He walks with you through it. Those are times when we must trust Him. Again, if He has said to you, "Let's go to the other side of the lake," He will get you to the other side of the lake! It may not be through placid waters, but you will arrive: God is our refuge and strength, A very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, Even though the earth be removed, And though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea; Though its waters roar and be troubled, Though the mountains shake with its swelling. (Psalm 46:1-3) Really, David? You won't even be afraid if the earth is removed? You won't be traumatized if great mountains start crashing into the sea? David had learned to trust his God no matter what. In Isaiah 43, the Lord said, When you go through deep waters, I will be with you. When you go through — Greg Laurie

What is the natural reaction when told you have a hopeless mental illness? That diagnosis does you in; that, and the humiliation of being there. I mean, the indignity you're subjected to. My God. — Kate Millett

People who continue in blatant sin whilst exercising spiritual gifts create this ever widening gulf in their personality which results in spiritual failure, emotional collapse, sometimes mental breakdown, physical illness, relational difficulties and quite often a complete moral lapse. — Graham Cooke

God is not here to be demanded of, begged from, or criticized. He hands out burdens to those who are strong enough to carry them, and I feel profoundly uncomfortable with the idea of lining up with the other invalids and asking for mine to be alleviated. — Ann Napolitano

Your jealousy does not deceive you. It is true that you make me healthy and happy and a thousand times more alive. Yet there is nothing I can do to prevent this happiness from turning against you. The stone also sings more loudly when the blood flows free and the body is at rest. Keep me rather in this cage, and feed me sparingly, if you dare. Anything that brings me closer to illness and the edge of death makes me more faithful. It is only when you make me suffer that I feel safe and secure. You should never have agreed to be a god for me if you were afraid to assume the duties of a god, and we all know that they are not as tender as all that. — Pauline Reage

There are plenty of atheists in foxholes. What I don't see are Christians in foxholes. If a Christian soldier takes a bullet to the knee, he will undoubtedly first call for a medic, not a priest. Reliance on god is typically only available when a problem can be ignored without discomfort or when the problem belongs to others (where it can be ignored without discomfort). When the chips are down, like when you have a serious illness or you've been shot or you're at war, even the most devout Christians rely on humans (doctors or other soldiers) even though they'll swear up and down that it's god helping them. — Sam Singleton

There will be the IV poles, the divorce papers, the sound of dirt hitting a casket. We will have moments where we can't catch our breath and all the world seems wrong, and we can't help but wonder if He even cares. — Angie Smith

In our family "whim-wham" is code, a defanged reference to any number of moods and psychological disorders, be they depressive, manic, or schizoaffective. Back in the 1970s and '80s - when they were all straight depression - we called them "dark nights of the soul." St. John of the Cross's phrase ennobled our sickness, spiritualized it. We cut God out of it after the manic breaks started in 1986, the year my dad, brother, and I were all committed. Call it manic depression or by its new, polite name, bipolr disorder. Whichever you wish. We stick to our folklore and call it the whim-whams. — David Lovelace

It never occurred to them that God may have provided the world with a vast array of very brainy medical types for the very reason of solving problems such as theirs. However, there is one thing that the medical profession cannot do and that is save people from being idiots. — Craig Ferguson

If you ask, flowers and plants will tell you many stories. God can talk through them, and if you ask them, they will raise their hands if they know they can help you with an illness. — Mabel Katz

O, my Jesus, I understand well that, just as illness is measured with a thermometer and a high fever tells us of the seriousness of the illness; so also, in the spiritual life, suffering is the thermometer which measures the love of God in a soul. — Mary Faustina Kowalska

Radical servanthood challenges us, while attempting persistently to overcome poverty, hunger, illness, and any other form of human misery, to reveal the gentle presence of our compassionate God in the midst of our broken world. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

God is a promise keeper especially in times of hardship:
.He brings comfort in times of mourning
.He wipes tears in times of weeping
.He brings laughter in times of sadness
.He brings joy in times of an anxiety attacks
.He brings provision in times of lack
.He brings peace in times of distraction
.He brings healing in times of illness
.He brings solution in times of trouble
The list goes on and His promises are 'Yes and Amen. — Euginia Herlihy

Thank God for the aged And for age itself, and illness and the grave. When we are old and ill, and particularly in the coffin, It is no trouble to behave. — T.H. White

During hard times, such as serious illness, if you had to choose, which would you pick, healing or knowing God is with you? If you're a Christian, maybe you'll get both, but knowing that, just as He said, He will be with us through anything and everything is the most comforting aspect of our God's nature. No other faith offers 'the God who draws near'. No other faith offers the God who walked in our shoes, Jesus, the One who understands our troubles, not just by His omniscience but by actual experience. — H.L. Wegley

She frowned, and the effect was so pretty he wondered if he was going mad. Why did he find this cranky, kooky woman so damned appealing? He knew for a fact he could go out tonight and drag home some hot, willing chick who would stroke his ego and never argue with him about anything. He closed his eyes and remembered just how good that felt. Willing women; god bless them. — Ros Baxter

She fell in love with freedom. In the Sommers' home she had lived shut up within four walls, in a stagnant atmosphere where time moved in circles and where she could barely glimpse the horizon through distorted windowpanes. She had grown up clad in the impenetrable armor of good manners and conventions, trained from girlhood to please and serve, bound by corset, routines, social norms, and fear. Fear had been her companion: fear of God and his unpredictable justice, of authority, of her adoptive parents, of illness and evil tongues, of anything unknown or different; fear of leaving the protection of her home and facing the dangers outside; fear of her own fragility as a woman, of dishonor and truth. Hers had been a sugar-coated reality built on the unspoken, on courteous silences, well-guarded secrets, order, and discipline. She had aspired to virtue but now she questioned the meaning of the word. — Isabel Allende

The symptoms and the illness are not the same thing. The illness exists long before the symptoms. Rather than being the illness, the symptoms are the beginning of its cures. The fact that they are unwanted makes them all the more a phenomenon of grace-a gift of god, a message from the unconscious, if you will, to initiate self-examination and repair. — M. Scott Peck

Always receive with equal contentment from God's hand either consolations or sufferings, peace or distress, health or illness. Ask nothing, refuse nothing, but always be ready to do and to suffer anything that comes from His Providence. — Teresa Margaret Of The Sacred Heart

It isn't discomfort, or dis-ease as he put it. It's this aching, throbbing, god-awful incurable pain - and it's known as life. When will the doctors learn: It isn't death that's the disease. — Wendy Law-Yone

Time mellows people as it mellows wine, as long as the grapes are good. You may set out to be a businesswoman or businessman but in the course of time end up caring for a dying parent, orphaned niece, or disabled brother. You may encounter illness yourself and end up being a writer, touching the heartstrings, not the purse strings of other people. That's why it's best to always be true to yourself and God and to be flexible within His will. He will use you. — Barbara Johnson

Ivanov: No, my clever young thing, it's not a question of romance. I say as before God that I will endure everything - depression and mental illness and ruin and the loss of my wife and premature old age and loneliness - but I cannot tolerate, cannot endure being ridiculous in my own eyes. I'm dying of shame at the thought that I, a healthy, strong man, have turned into some sort of Hamlet or Manfred, some sort of 'superfluous man' ... devil knows precisely what!
There are pitiful people who are flattered by being called Hamlet or superfluous men, but for me it's a disgrace! It stirs up my pride, I'm overcome by shame and I suffer ... — Anton Chekhov

Oh God just look at me now ... one night opens words and utters pain ... I cannot begin to explain to you ... this ... I am not here. This is not happening. Oh wait, it is, isn't it?
I am a ghost. I am not here, not really. You see skin and cuts and frailty ... these are symptoms, you known, of a ghost. An unclear image with unclear thoughts whispering vague things ...
If I told you what was really in my head, you'd never let me leave this place. And I have no desire to spend time in hell while I'm still, in theory, alive. — Emily Andrews

I divested myself of despair and fear when I came here. Now there is no more catching one's own eye in the mirror, there are no bad books, no plastic, no insurance premiums, and of cours eno illness. Contrition does not exist, nor gnashing of teeth. No one howls as the first clod of earth hits the casket. The poor we no longer have with us. Our calm hearts strike only the hour, and God, as promised, proves to be mercy clothed in light. — Jane Kenyon

Is wanting to be different a serious illness?" "It is if you force yourself to be the same as everyone else. It causes neuroses, psychoses, and paranoia. It's a distortion of nature, it goes against God's laws, for in all the world's woods and forests, he did not create a single leaf the same as another. But you think it's insane to be different, and that's why you chose to live in Villete, because everyone is different here, and so you appear to be the same as everyone else. — Anonymous

Chronic illness is hard. Pain is hard. Isolation is hard. The financial cost is hard. Grieving is hard and necessary and sometimes takes far longer than we every imagined. — Cindee Snider Re

In the same way that a powerful medicine cures an illness, so illness itself is a medicine to cure passion. And there is much profit of soul in bearing illness quietly and giving thanks to God. — Syncletica Of Alexandria

Let us thank God for having made us this gift of death, so that life is to have meaning; of night, that day is to have meaning; silence, that speech is to have meaning; illness, that health is to have meaning; war, that peace is to have meaning. Let us give thanks to Him for having given us weariness and pain, so that rest and joy are to have meaning. Let us give thanks to him, whose wisdom is infinite. — Amin Maalouf

What if illness - the stripping away of our health, our dreams, our understanding of who we are and what our future holds - is really a gift - God offering Himself to us unencumbered by all the noise, all the things that clutter our hearts and so easily fill our days? Because what if that quiet, stripped-away space is where hope is found? Where God leans in close whispering love to our weary souls until it becomes as familiar as the beating of our own hearts? — Cindee Snider Re

People talk about how fast life can go from good to bad. How on day you're happy, everything is going fine, and then something happens. Someone dies or someone leaves. There's an illness or an accident. Life as you know it slips away. But it can got the other way too. You can go from god-awful to pretty OK in a single day. That's what happened to us, and it was just as jarring. — Laura M. Flynn

But I am beginning to understand about the dignity and the art of wigs and the makeup. This small, everyday attentiveness of eyebrow pencils is perhaps a picture of the very sort of bodily care our embodied God would have us cultivate, weather in illness or wellness, whether our bodies are in the throes of ecstasy or the throes of pain. — Lauren F. Winner

Realize that illness and other temporal setbacks often come to us from the hand of God our Lord, and are sent to help us know ourselves better, to free ourselves of the love of created things, and to reflect on the brevity of this life and, thus, to prepare ourselves for the life which is without end. — Saint Ignatius

Illness itself can make you angry, enraged, furious, and it made me angry, enraged, and furious. I don't think it brought me to God at all. It depends how you deal with it. And I think that, at its best, three little words that always have to be applied to religion, religion can help you to deal with that. — Karen Armstrong

If we believe that God knits us together in our mother's womb, do we therefore beleive that God knits crazy into our being? If God is in all places and is present at all times, is God also in mental illness? If we are made in God's image, then is God crazy too? — Sarah Griffith Lund

The Stoics say, " Retire within yourselves; it is there you will find your rest." And that is not true. Others say, "Go out of yourselves; seek happiness in amusement." And this is not true. Illness comes. Happiness is neither without us nor within us. It is in God, both without us and within us. — Blaise Pascal

For too many of us, it is only when adversity strikes that living for Christ becomes a priority: a sudden crisis such as a life-threatening illness, the death of a loved one, or the loss of a job or income reminds us that each day is precious, and only then do we begin to (re)evaluate our existence. But why is there no sense of urgency or accountability when God blesses us with an event that reveals the purpose of our soul? — Angela Monique Crudupt

Life has its share of joys and laughter - but we also know life's road is often very rough. Temptations assail us; people disappoint us; illness and age weaken us; tragedies and sorrows ambush us; evil and injustice overpower us. Life is hard - but God is good, and heaven is real! — Billy Graham

Even as a man just recovering from illness walks only so far as he is obliged to go, with a slow and weary step, so the converted sinner journeys along as far as God commands him but slowly and wearily, until he attains a spirit of true devotion, and then, like a sound man, he not only gets along, but he runs and leaps in the way of God's Commands, and hastens gladly along the paths of heavenly counsels and inspirations. — Francis De Sales

Even an expert has room to improve, grow and learn a little more. All the great masters teach this. For this reason, never allow an expert's 'opinion' to limit you in any way, whether it is with your intellect, accomplishments or illness and disease — Gary Hopkins

The truth of the matter is, Satan and God may want the exact same event to take place - but for different reasons. Satan's motive in Jesus' crucifixion was rebellion; God's motive was love and mercy. Satan was a secondary cause behind the Crucifixion, but it was God who ultimately wanted it, willed it, and allowed Satan to carry it out. And the same holds true for disease. — Joni Eareckson Tada

Put God to the test when troubles come. He won't let you down. In the midst of a painful illness, Paul begged God to intervene and take it away. But God replied, "My grace is sufficient for you" (2 Corinthians 12:9). It was sufficient for Paul, and it will be for you. — Billy Graham

The disturbed individual who believes himself to be Christ, or to receive messages from God, is something of a cliche in our society. Ever since Sigmund Freud, many people have associated religiosity with neurosis and mental illness. — Robert Winston

During my mental illness, thank God, my grandma was my human rescuer and angel, she ask me to stop taking the medication, leading to the recovering. — Lailah Gifty Akita

A Miracle is nothing more, than the removal of an Illusion. — Vivian Amis

There is complete hope for terminal illness in the power of the Almighty God. The hands of Jesus are healing hands...the hands of Jesus are saving hands. Jesus brought peace and restoration, reconciliation, power, purpose, love, understading, purity and compatibility with him and the world we live in. we are healed through him. He mends brokenness and gives us back our lives which are stollen by the trials and suffering of this dark world. He is the light and life giving God. We ought to pray in our daily lives to receive from God, his help, upholding power and healing in the Name of Jesus Christ his one and only Son. When we ask from him...then we receive healing, relief from suffering, we stop living in fear of death. Read these books and experience the real presence of the supernatural, almighty sovereign and loving God. — Stellah Mupanduki

Sometimes pain and illness are not meant to be removed. You can't second-guess God. Rather than praying for it to go away, it's often wiser to pray that you learn as much from it as you possibly can. — Stephen Levine

But what makes our marriage holy, what makes it "set apart" and sacramental, isn't the marriage certificate filed away in the basement or the degree to which we follow a list of rules and roles, it's the way God shows up in those everyday moments - loading the dishwasher, sharing a joke, hosting a meal, enduring an illness, working through a disagreement - and gives us the chance to notice, to pay attention to the divine. It's the way the God of resurrection makes all things new. — Rachel Held Evans

We will die soon; and still our "hope is from him." May we not expect that when we face illness He will send angels to carry us to His bosom? We believe that when the pulse is faint and the heart is weak, some angelic messenger shall stand and look with loving eyes upon us and whisper, "Come away!" As we approach the heavenly gate, we expect to hear the welcome invitation, "Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world."1 We are expecting harps of gold and crowns of glory; we are hoping soon to be among the company of shining ones before the throne; we are looking forward and longing for the time when we shall be like our glorious Lord - for "We shall see him as he is."2 Then if these are your hopes, O my soul, live for God; live with the desire and resolve to glorify Him from whose grace in your election, redemption, and calling you safely "hope" for the coming glory. — Anonymous

When I awaken in the morning, I am thankful for a new day. I am thankful for everything that I have materially. I am thankful for everything I have spiritually. I thank God for allowing me to experience these things, even the experiences that may not seem so positive, such as developing an illness. I may not understand why I have the illness, but I sense that it is there for a purpose, and so I thank God for it. I ask Him to allow me to expand beyond my narrow-mindedness and self-centeredness so that I can see the good that comes from everything. — Betty Eadie

The thing is, there is no certainty in this life - in one second your entire world could shift. I'm not saying it will, but I am living proof that It can. We never prepare for tragedy and that's a good thing but my god what's it's taught me is how little we appreciate what we have or some cases once had. — Nikki Rowe

Keep me rather in this cage, and feed me sparingly, if you dare. Anything that brings me closer to illness and the edge of death makes me more faithful. It is only when you make me suffer that I feel safe and secure. You should never have agreed to be a god for me if you were afraid to assume the duties of a god, and we know that they are not as tender as all that. You have already seen me cry. Now you must learn to relish my tears. — Pauline Reage

His noise is getting quieter, but I can still see it there still-
See how he feels the skin of my hand against his, see how he wants to take it and press it against his mouth, how he wants to breathe in the smell of me and how beautiful I look to him, how strong after all that illness, and how he wants to just lightly touch my neck, just there, and how he wants to take me in his arms and-
"Oh, God," he says, looking away suddenly. "Viola, I'm sorry, I didn't mean-"
But I just put my hand to the back of his neck-
And he says, "Viola-?"
And I pull myself towards him-
And I kiss him.
And it feels like, finally. — Patrick Ness

Charles L. Allen once said, "When you say a person or situation is hopeless, you are slamming a door in the face of God." Ouch. It is easy to focus on the doors being slammed (rejection, illness, fatigue, failures) and not see things from God's perspective. He never leaves us. — Celeste Palermo

We don't have to beg or bribe God to give us strength or hope or patience. We need only turn to Him, admit that we can't do this on our own, and understand that bravely bearing up under long-term illness is one of the most human, and one of the most godly, things we can ever do. One of the things that constantly reassures me that God is real, and not just an idea that religious leaders made up, is the fact that people who pray for strength, hope and courage so often find resources of strength, hope and courage that they did not have before they prayed. — Harold S. Kushner

God is always joking. Look at your own life - it is a joke! Look at other people's lives, and you will find jokes and jokes and jokes. Seriousness is illness; seriousness has nothing spiritual about it. Spirituality is laughter, spirituality is joy, spirituality is fun. — Rajneesh

Often, when we are in trouble, or doubting, or struggling, we rely on others to carry us to God. Just as often we must do the carrying, to help friends who are struggling. This is one of the many benefits of organized religion, as we all need others to help us find God. Even though we may disagree with others and find life in a community occasionally annoying and sometimes scandalous, we need others, because the community is one way that we are carried to God, especially when we are too weak to walk to God on our own. But I wondered about the paralyzed man. He may have felt shame for his illness or for being unable to support himself. Maybe his friends carried him in spite of himself. Sometimes when we are too embarrassed to approach God, someone must bring us there - even drag us there. Many times when I am discouraged, demoralized, or angry at God, it is friends who remind me of God's great love and who carry me to God. We cannot come to God without others. — James Martin

The Mania Speaks


You clumsy bootlegger. Little daffodil.
I watered you with an ocean and you plucked one little vein?
Downed a couple bottles of pills and got yourself carted off to the ER?
I gifted you the will of gunpowder, a matchstick tongue, and all you managed
was a shredded sweater and a police warning?
You should be legend by now.
Girl in an orange jumpsuit, a headline.
I built you from the purest napalm, fed you wine and bourbon.
Preened you in the dark, hammered lullabies into your thin skull.
I painted over the walls, wrote the poems. I shook your goddamn boots.
Now you want out? Think you'll wrestle me out of you with prescriptions?
A good man's good love and some breathing exercises?
You think I can't tame that? I always come home. Always.
Ravenous. Loaded. You know better than anybody:
I'm bigger than God. — Jeanann Verlee

Never confuse the person, formed in the image of God, with the evil that is in him: because evil is but a chance misfortune, an illness, a devilish reverie. But the very essence of the person is the image of God, and this remains in him despite every disfigurement. — John Of Kronstadt

You are someone who is different, but who wants to be the same as everyone else. And that in my view is a serious illness. God chose you to be different. Why are you disappointing God with this kind of attitude? — Paulo Coelho

What if everything operates by love?' I said to her, 'I mean, what if this God presence ... is God moving through us and through everything we do? If so, why do we resist it? What if everything horrible that happens, from drive-by shootings to illness, is because we have broken this chain of love, and we don't know how to put everything right again? — Carolyn Weber

I thank God for this illness and these physical discomforts, because I have the time to converse with the Lord Jesus. — Mary Faustina Kowalska

The One who has done the greatest thing of all for you, must be concerned about you in everything, and though the clouds are thick and you cannot see His face, you know He is there. 'Behind a frowning providence He hides a smiling face.' Now hold on to that. You say that you do not see His smile. I agree that these earth born clouds prevent my seeing Him, but He is there and He will never allow anything finally harmful to take place. Nothing can happen to you but what He allows, I do not care what it may be, some great disappointment, perhaps, or it may be an illness, it may be a tragedy of some sort, I do not know what it is, but you can be certain of this, that God permits that thing to happen to you because it is ultimately for your good. 'Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous; nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness ... ' (Hebrews 12. 11). (Spiritual Depression Its Causes and Cure, 145) — D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

This is the story of how Dad lived with his lung cancer. But it is much more. Through his illness and the miracles we experienced, I came to see that Dad's was not just a journey. It was a journey home. Home to God. — Joseph M. Hanneman

What about you? What are you going to be?" I knew immediately I shouldn't have asked. His smile faded, and he looked down at his hands in his lap. I'd about had enough of tiptoeing around his illness. "How do you expect God to heal you if you don't even believe it?" I spoke firmly to make sure my own heart got the message as well. "I believe that you, Matthew Doyle, are going to be fine someday. So when I ask you what you want to do with your life, I ask cause I know you're going to have a life! I'm tired of all this moping around waiting to die malarkey." He raised his eyebrows and pushed himself forward in the chair. "I know what you believe, Ruby. You been saying it since the day you got here. And I ain't getting any better. You're just putting me in a position of disappointing you, and I can't hardly stand that. Don't you think I want a life?" "I don't know. Do you?" "Of course I do! — Jennifer H. Westall

For the first time, I understood the ancients' need to find explanations for why things happen. It's a quintessential human imperative. Random is not emotionally satisfying. Therefore, lightning was the bolt from an angry god. Crop failure was punishment for failing to honor the gods with a fatted calf. The plague happened because you took the Lord's name in vain or coveted your neighbor's wife. Going to church regularly and praying could forestall illness. And on and on. — Alanna Mitchell

You don't have to perceive the future as five or ten years from now. Tomorrow is the future. Ask God for that each day and slowly you'll begin to understand how important each day can be. — Carol Lynne

God only knew what ran underneath the fierce self-discipline and emotional control that had come with my upbringing. But the cracks were there, I knew it, and they frightened me. — Kay Redfield Jamison

Warned by such evidences of their spiritual illness, believers profit by their humiliations. Robbed of their foolish confidence in the flesh, they take refuge in the grace of God. And when they have done so, they experience the nearness of the divine protection which is to them a strong fortress (Ps 30:6-7). — John Calvin

Recently God asked me the same question in a new way, "And if I don't allow you to heal, if I never remove the pain, will you still trust Me? — Cindee Snider Re

Although your decision to die is firm, your decision to become a god has caused you to suffer. You suffered, wondering why you couldn't cure Magdalia's illness, wondering why you weren't capable of saving her. All you wanted to do was protect your only sister, wasn't that it? Not in heaven, but here on Earth. You wanted to make Lady Maldaria happy more than anything else, didn't you? And so now, to avoid the guilt of your loved one dying at your expense, you're willing to die yourself. You've already come to this realization. You know you aren't god. You're just a fragile human being who's capable of feeling pain and having doubts. Go back to being an ordinary man and start all over again for the sake of those who look up to you.
-Kenshin — Nobuhiro Watsuki

I appear at times merry and in good heart, talk, too, before others quite reasonably, and it looks as if I felt, too, God knows how well within my skin. Yet the soul maintains its deathly sleep and the heart bleeds from a thousand wounds. — Hugo Wolf

More than ever I find myself in the hands of God. This (illness) is what I have wanted all my life from my youth. But now there is a difference; the initiative is entirely with God. It is indeed a profound spiritual experience to know and feel myself so totally in God's hands. — Pedro Arrupe

I don't know why one person gets sick, and another does not, but I can only assume that some natural laws which we don't understand are at work. I cannot believe that God "sends" illness to a specific person for a specific reason. I don't believe in a God who has a weekly quota of malignant tumors to distribute, and consults His computer to find out who deserves one most or who could handle it best. "What did I do to deserve this?" is an understandable outcry from a sick and suffering person, but it is really the wrong question. Being sick or being healthy is not a matter of what God decides that we deserve. The better question is "If this has happened to me, what do I do now, and who is there to help me do it?" As we saw in the previous chapter, it becomes much easier to take God seriously as the source of moral values if we don't hold Him responsible for all the unfair things that happen in the world. — Harold S. Kushner

According to Islam, whenever we are struck by illness or misfortune or someone hurts us, there is a higher purpose behind it, which we may not understand at the time,' one of them said to me. 'That's where trust comes in. Through suffering, God helps us to better ourselves and make good our mistakes. It is a form of purification and also God's way of testing the strength of our faith and the goodness of our character.' Another lady suggested I look on the bright side.

'Suffering draws us closer to God and that is our aim in life,' she said. Then she quoted Rumi who had said, 'It is pain that draws man to his Lord, because when he is well, he doesn't remember the Lord.' I tried to look at the positive and believe that there was a higher, spiritual perspective on what I had just been through, and all the advice I was given helped me a lot. But it took quite a while for my heart to catch up with my mind. — Kristiane Backer

A sick person is Allah's guest for as long as he is ill. Every day he is sick, God gives him countless rewards, as long as he says ' al hamdulillah', praise be
to God, and does not fight it and complain. When God returns to him his health, he expiates his sins and gives him the status of the newly-born
(completely pure and free of any sin). Illness is a mercy and a blessing. — Kristiane Backer