IF I have been happy or useful in the world," said an eminent doctor, "it is due largely to the effect of a question once put by a stranger."
I was a poor boy and a cripple, and one day I was standing on a ball field, watching the other boys with bitterness and envy. They were well fed and clothed, and strong and healthy. I was sick at heart. A young man, standing near, seeing perhaps my discontent, said to me,
"You wish you were in their place?"
"Yes, I do," I broke out. "Why should they have everything and I have nothing?"
"God may have given them health, or money, or education to be of some use in the world. Did you ever think He gave you your lame leg for the same reason—, to make a man of you?"
I did not answer, but turned away, and never saw him again. But I couldn't get his words out of my mind. My crippled leg—God's gift? To teach me patience? I did not believe it. But I was a thoughtful boy, taught to reverence God, and the more I thought of it the more it seemed that the stranger had told the truth. I did believe that God pitied me, and it turned me to Him as the Source of all good, and led me to look at difficulties as a means of strengthening my faith, and my injured limb as God's gift for a special purpose.
Messages of God’s Love 11/13/1932