For philosophers, pain is a problem of metaphysics; for stoics, it is an exercise; for mystics, it is an ecstasy; for the religious, a travail meekly to be borne; for clinicians a symptom to be understood and an ill to be relieved.  (Charles F. W. Illingworth)

God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.  (C. S. Lewis)

Mercy hath a heaven, and justice a hell, to display itself to eternity, but long-suffering hath only a short-lived earth.  (Henry Smith)

How often we look upon God as our last and feeblest resource! We go to Him because we have nowhere else to go. And then we learn that the storms of life have driven us, not upon the rocks, but into the desired haven.  (George Macdonald)

Calvary is God’s great proof that suffering in the will of God always leads to glory (Warren Wiersbe).

Why should I start at the plough of my Lord, that maketh the deep furrows on my soul? I know he is no idle husbandman, he purposeth a crop. (Samuel Rutherford)

I for my part owe more, I think, to the anvil and to the hammer, to the fire and to the file, than anything else. I bless the Lord for his correctives of his providence by which, if he has blessed me on the one hand with sweets, he has blessed me on the other hand with bitters. To me he has measured out a double blessing – the lamb, and the bitter herbs to eat with it; seldom one without the other. (Spurgeon)

There is honey in every cup of affliction which God puts into the hand of the Christian; but generally he has to wait until he reaches the bottom before he can taste it. (Spurgeon)

I venture to say that the greatest earthly blessing that God can give to any of us is health, with the exception of sickness. Sickness has frequently been of more use to the saints of God than health has…A sick wife, a newly-made grave, poverty, slander, sinking of spirit, might teach us lessons nowhere else to be learned so well. Trials drive us to the realities of religion. (Spurgeon)

Illness is the doctor to whom we pay most heed: to kindness, to knowledge we make promises only; pain we obey.  (Marcel Proust)

Good men dread prosperity in the world more than adversity. (Gregory the Great)

What God whispers to us in our pleasure, He shouts to us in our pain.

Seldom does God use a person greatly who has not been hurt deeply. (A. W. Tozer)

If God be our God, He will give us peace in trouble. When there is a storm without, He will make peace within. The world can create trouble in peace, but God can create peace in trouble. (Thomas Watson)

I quote the following with disapproval(!)…

All sickness is evil and destructive; it is of the devil, and Jesus Christ, God’s Son, wants to heal you of it today, just as he did in Bible days. (T.L. Osborn)