christian living on Medicine

Let us understand that God is a physician, and that suffering is a medicine for salvation, not a punishment for damnation.

It is often said that people die as they lived. This was certainly true of the great Protestant Reformer Martin Luther. As Luther came close to the end of his life, he suffered from severe headaches w...

It’s a warning people have understood for centuries. Some advice needs to be taken “with a grain of salt.” Ever wondered what was meant by that? In ancient times, salt was hard to come by, expensive, ...

Always laugh when you can. It is cheap medicine.

I do not deny that medicine is a gift of God, nor do I refuse to acknowledge science in the skill of many physicians; but, take the best of them, how far are they from perfection? A sound regimen prod...

The human body experiences a powerful gravitational pull in the direction of hope. That is why the patient's hopes are the physician's secret weapon. They are the hidden ingredients in any pre...

Jesus, our Great Physician, our sins have brought wounds on ourselves and others. Heal our hearts first, that we would no longer desire the sins that have only brought us and others pain. Go on to hea...

Brenda Peterson is an author whose work crosses multiple genres, including fiction, nonfiction, and children’s books. In an essay entitled In Praise of Skin, Peterson shares a true story from her own ...

Muhammed Ali served as a role model to many young people during his boxing career. When one student had the opportunity to question Ali, he asked him whether he should continue his studies in college ...

Trials are medicines which our gracious and wise Physician prescribes because we need them; and he proportions the frequency and weight of them to what the case requires. Let us trust his skill and th...

In The God-Shaped Brain , Timothy R. Jennings tells a well-attested story about how belief can affect the body. Late one night in a small Alabama cemetery, Vance Vanders had a run-in with the local...

The greatest disease in the West today is not TB or leprosy; it is being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for. We can cure physical diseases with medicine, but the only cure for loneliness, despair, and...

One summer morning in 1896, Albert Schweitzer came upon the biblical passage “Whosoever would save his life shall lose it and whosoever shall lose his life for my sake shall save it.” He knew at the m...

When conflict and division are driving both politics and media (including social media), the contrast between the way of the world and the way of Jesus stands out more than ever. How can pastors, task...

God—Father, Son and Spirit; You are a God of compassion and love. Like the Israelites in the wilderness, we’ve known Your love, and experienced Your care and provision. Repeatedly You’ve answered our ...

In comparison to other societies, Americans and other North Atlantic peoples are naturalistic. Non-Western peoples are frequently concerned about the activities of supernatural beings . . . The wide-r...

What Is “Generosity”? The modern English word “generosity” derives from the Latin word generōsus, which means “of noble birth.” That Latin word was passed down to English through the Old French word g...

From the early centuries of the church, the Psalms were memorized and used regularly in Christian worship. Fourth-century bishop athanasiusofalexandria spoke eloquently about how they are God’s medici...

We have conducted the previous exercise in dozens of middle-to-upper-class, predominantly Caucasian, North American churches. In the vast majority of cases, these audiences describe poverty differentl...

One of the things that is interesting about Lloyd-Jones’s testimony is that he was a royal physician when he became a Christian; he worked for Lord Horder, the physician to the royal family. If he had...

A few years ago I was with my family in Washington, D.C., a wildly complex city laid out like a square wheel with broken spokes making an angular maze that is a nightmare to navigate. However, my fami...

The renowned scholar and musician Albert Schweitzer’s life was turned upside down one summer morning in 1896 while reading his Bible. He came upon Matthew 16:25: “For whosoever will save his life shal...

Walker Percy wrote six novels in which he made us insiders to the spiritual disease of alienation that he found pervasive in American culture. His name for the condition is “lost in the cosmos.” We do...

Christ is the Good Physician. There is no disease He cannot heal; no sin He cannot remove; no trouble He cannot help. He is the Balm of Gilead, the Great Physician who has never yet failed to heal all...

A powerful healer of the physically and mentally sick, . . . he was . . . unconditionally given over to the rescue, not of communities, but of persons in need.

Hope is the physician of each misery.

Health is not valued till sickness comes.

Medical literature is replete with case reports of patients dying, not from actual illness, but from believing they were sick, from the fear they were going to die.

In the early 1800s, the German naturalist and explorer Baron Alexander von Humboldt journeyed through South America on a scientific expedition. Deep in the Amazon rainforest, he encountered Indigenous...

Love cures people: the ones who receive love and the ones who give it, too.