No one wants to be ill. While one is “under the weather” it is difficult to assume that anything positive can come from the experience of sickness. Everyone has a turn in the sick bed, and it is easy enough to be philosophical about the experience - when it is not your turn.

John Wesley was first and foremost a servant of God’s people. He was determined to take God’s word and God’s healing message to all people. However, he had a particular sense of mission to the poor. He was dedicated to take as many services to the poor as he possibly could. John Wesley actually administered medicine and treated simple illnesses of the poor, knowing they could not afford health care otherwise.

As a student and later as a faculty member at Oxford, he had attended medical lectures, preparing himself in case there were no physicians in the Georgia colony. In addition, he wanted to be able to provide simple medical services for the poor. He secured the advice of a pharmacist and an experienced physician, and he was careful to refer the more serious cases to medical specialists.

John Wesley certainly was not immune to poor health himself. Given his rugged, outdoor lifestyle, it is amazing he was not sick more often. In December 1753, he became particularly ill, and many of his friends became very concerned about his likelihood of recovery. Messages of condolences poured in from many people. Even one of his detractors, George Whitfield, had words of sympathy and best wishes for him. It was a deeply sorrowful George Whitefield who wrote Wesley on December 3, 1753. "If seeing you so weak when leaving London distressed me, the news and prospect of your approaching dissolution have quite weighed me down. I pity myself and the church but not you. A radiant throne awaits you, and ere long you will enter into your Master's joy. Yonder he stands with a massy crown, ready to put it on your head amidst an admiring throng of saints and angels; but I, poor I, that have been waiting for my dissolution these nineteen Years, must be left behind."

It is also significant to note that John Wesley’s illness helped reunite him with his estranged brother, Charles. News of Wesley's illness spread throughout the societies in England. Charles Wesley hurried to Lewisham from Bristol and wrote that his brother was "in imminent danger, being far gone, and very suddenly, in a consumption."

In recent years the sibling rivalry between the two had broken out into open complaints. John and Charles were at odds with each other on many things related to the church and to their personal lives. But now, with John seriously ill, "Charles fell on his neck and wept." John requested that Charles and Molly drop their disagreements and be reconciled to each other just as they had now become reconciled to him. From that time onward a semblance of friendship appeared between them.

It is true, sickness can have healing benefits.