Comforters, Awkward – Charles Spurgeon
YOU know, in common life, there are some people who seem to be born nurses. Others there are, to be sure, who cannot nurse at all; if you were ill, you would never have them about you even if they would come for nothing and pay you for having them. They mean well, but somehow or other they would stamp across the room every time they moved, and would be sure to wake you up; and if there were any physic to be taken at night, it would taste all the worse if they gave it to you. But you have known a real nurse—perhaps your own wife—you never did hear her walk across the room when you were ill, and you never would even if you had an instrument to your ear like a microscope to the eye, magnifying the minutest thing; she steps so softly that you might almost sooner hear her heart beat than her footfall. Then, too, she understands your taste exactly, and always knows what to bring you. Whoever heard of a nurse more fit for her work than Miss Nightingale? She seems as if she could do nothing else, and as if God had sent her into the world on purpose, not only that she might be a nurse herself, but that she might also teach others to nurse. Well, it is just the same in spiritual things. I have used a homely illustration to show you what I mean. There are some people who, if they try to comfort you when you are distressed, go so awkwardly to work about it, that they are sure to give you a great deal more trouble than you had before. They really mean well, and try to do their best, but they cannot do what you want done. It is not their work; they are not “helps;” they take a great crowbar to do the thing which a little picklock would easily effect, and they go about everything in such a strange, clumsy style, that you can see they were not made for their work, The true “help” to a distressed soul is a person who, though his head may not be very big, has a large and warm heart. He is a man, in fact, all heart. It was said of John, that he was a pillar of fire from head to foot. This is the kind of man the soul wants when it is shivering in the cold winter of despondency.