Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace, and
be healed of your affliction. - Mark 5:34
In 1932, as the US was undergoing a financial breakdown, missionary Robert Cummings was
suffering an emotional breakdown. As he carried on his evangelistic ministry with his wife
in India, he became obsessed by blasphemous and sinful thoughts so overwhelming that he
felt cast aside by God and eternally lost. Hospital care and therapy were of no help. His
wife brought him back to the US where he was placed in a private mental facility.
For 2 more years Robert underwent indescribable emotional agony. Then one morning he knelt
beside his bed begging for relief. God answered dramatically with the words of a poem by
James Procter: "My soul is night, my heart is steel - I cannot see, I cannot feel;
for light, for life I must appeal in simple faith to Jesus" (© Renewal 1937 Hope
Publishing Company).
As Robert repeated those lines, peace surged through his soul. Dread vanished from his
heart and he was filled with joy and gratitude. Then a hymn by William Sleeper welled up
from the depths of his memory, which he sang with one significant change. For him it
wasn't, "Jesus, I come to Thee," but "Jesus has come to me."
Into my bondage, sorrow, and night,
Jesus has come, Jesus has come;
Bringing His freedom, gladness, and light -
Jesus has come to me.
By God's grace we may have been spared from extreme emotional distress. But all of us
can join in singing praise to the One who has come to bring peace to our souls.
-VCG
God's dawn of deliverance often comes when the hour of
trial is darkest.