“I am sorry, my friend, that your room is not on the other side of the house, where the sun could shine upon you.  You never can have any sunshine here.”

“Oh, you are mistaken,” she said:  “the sunshine pours in at every window, and through every crack.”

The lady looked surprised.

“I mean Jesus, ‘the Sun of righteousness,’ shines in here, and makes everything bright to me.”

Here we see Jesus showing his power to comfort.

“Ice in Summer.”  Some years ago a Christian merchant, in one of our eastern cities, failed in business, and lost everything he had.  After talking over their affairs with his wife, who was a good Christian woman, they concluded to move out to the west and begin life again there.  He bought some land on the wide rolling prairie, built a log cabin, and began to cultivate his farm.  In the midst of the second summer, hard work and exposure to the sun brought on an attack of sickness, and a raging fever set in.  They were twelve miles away from the nearest town.  One of the neighbors went there and came back with a doctor.  He examined the case very carefully, and left some medicine with them, and told them what to do.  He said it was a very dangerous attack.  If they could only get some ice to apply to the burning brow of the sick man, he thought he might get over it; but, without that, there was very little prospect of his recovery.

As soon as the doctor was gone, the sorrowful wife gathered her family and friends round the bedside of her sick husband, and kneeled down with them in prayer.  She told God what the doctor had said, and prayed very earnestly that he who has the power to do everything, would send them some ice.

When the prayer was over, some of the neighbors whispered to each other that the poor distressed woman must be losing her mind.  “The idea of getting ice here,” they said, “when everybody knows there isn’t a bit of ice in all the country!  It would be contrary to all the laws of nature to have ice in summer.”

The wife of the sick man heard their remarks, but they did not shake her faith in God, and in the power of prayer.  Silently, but earnestly, her heart breathed forth the cry for ice.

As the day wore on, heavy clouds began to gather in the western sky.  They rolled in darkness over the heavens.  The distant thunder was heard to mutter.  Nearer and louder it was heard.  The lightning began to flash.  Presently the storm burst in its fury.  It came first in rain, and then in hail.  The hail-stones came in lumps of ice as big as eggs.  They lay thick in the furrows of the field.  The thankful wife went out, and soon came in rejoicing with a bucket full of ice.  It was applied in bags to her husband’s head.  The fever broke, and he was restored to life and health.

This grateful woman never troubled herself with any questions about whether it was a miracle or not.  She only knew that she had prayed for ice in summer, and that the ice had come.  And her faith was stronger than ever that the gracious Saviour, who did so many miracles when he was on earth, has just the same power now to comfort his people when they are in trouble.