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Matthew 8:1-34That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet, saying, Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses (8:17).The Reality Of Suffering What is to be the attitude of a child of God toward illness? We must accept the fact that illness, disease, germs, bacteria, these things that hurt us and cause us to be sick, they are real and they are here, along with the accidents into which we may fall. Death is here, and we cannot deny it. One of the strangest of all of the denominations to me is the one that denies the reality of hurt, injury, disease, and illness. They say it is just in the mind. There is no such thing as hurt or illness or disease. The irony is that at the same time they are saying this, they may have teeth full of fillings and eyes covered with thick glasses. The mother of one of the professors in the university was a big, heavy woman, and one day she stumbled and fell down the steps into the basement. She was bruised from head to foot. The daughter ran down and helped her mother up, and said to her mother, “You’re not hurt. That’s just in your mind.” No doctor was called; no pharmacist was contacted for medication. I went out to see that mother, lying in her bed in pain, black and blue all over. She was hurt and hurting—but not to her daughter, who believed any pain or suffering was only present in her mother’s mind. The Scriptures, on the other hand, offer comfort to those who are suffering, and they encourage us to seek healing from the Great Physician.