Sickness has struck me, and I have lost my courage. So long as my body was feeling well, I took health for granted. I am a strong, healthy man, can eat anything and sleep anywhere, can put in any amount of hours of work, can rough it out, can brave the sun in summer, the snow in winter, and the sickly wetness of the long monsoon months. I may have a passing headache or a sneezing cold, but I spurn medicines and ignore doctors, and I know that my trustworthy body can pull me through any crisis and defy any microbes or bacteria in the interest of my work which cannot wait as it is work for people and for God. I am proud of my strength and count on it to keep on working without rest and living without care.

But now sickness has come and I am down. Down in my body between the burning sheets of a hospital bed, and down in my soul under the humiliation and the perplexity of my broken strength. My head is reeling, my temples are throbbing, my whole body is aching, my chest has to force itself to breathe. I have no appetite, no sleep, no desire to see anybody, and above all no desire to be seen by anybody in my hour of misery which looks as though it were to last for ever. If my body fails me, how can I go on living any more?

“My iniquities have poured over my head;
they are a load heavier than I can bear.
My wounds fester and stink because of my folly.
I am bowed down and utterly prostrate.

All day long I go about as if in mourning,
For my loins burn with fever,
And there is no wholesome flesh in me.”

I now reflect, and in the long hours of my enforced idleness, my thoughts turn of necessity to my body, and I begin to see it in a new light and to recover a relationship with it I should have never lost. My body’s sickness is its language, its way of telling me that I was misusing it, ignoring it, despising it, while it is very much part of me. As a child cries when no attention is paid to it, so my body cries because I have neglected it. Those cries are its fever and its weakness and its pain. And now I listen to them and grasp their meaning and accept their wisdom.

We’ll go together through life, my dear body, hand in hand and heart to heart, with the rhythms of your flesh giving expression to the tides of thought and feeling that swell and ebb inside my mind. Smile when I rejoice, and tremble when I fear; relax when I rest, and tense every nerve when I concentrate. Warn me of coming dangers, signal your fatigue before it is too late, and radiate your approval when you feel fine and like my doings and enjoy life with me.

Thank you, Lord, for my body, my faithful companion and trusty guide in the paths of life. And thanks even for this sickness that brings me closer to it and teaches me to take care of it with love and providence. Thank you for reminding me of my whole self, of reuniting me again, of making me whole. And as a sign of your blessing, as a recognition that this sickness came from you to awaken me to the totality of my being, heal now my body which you have created and restore to me the joy of health and strength to go on living with zest and confidence, to go on working for you mindful now that it is not only my mind and my soul that work, but my body with them in loving unity and faithful cooperation. When I pray it is now the whole of me that prays to you.