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The Ministry of Healing
sick grow stronger, they will venture to take a few steps to gather
some of the lovely flowers, precious messengers of God’s love to
His afflicted family here below.
Plans should be devised for keeping patients out of doors. For
those who are able to work, let some pleasant, easy employment be
provided. Show them how agreeable and helpful this outdoor work
is. Encourage them to breathe the fresh air. Teach them to breathe
deeply, and in breathing and speaking to exercise the abdominal
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muscles. This is an education that will be invaluable to them.
Exercise in the open air should be prescribed as a life-giving
necessity. And for such exercises there is nothing better than the
cultivation of the soil. Let patients have flower beds to care for,
or work to do in the orchard or vegetable garden. As they are
encouraged to leave their rooms and spend time in the open air,
cultivating flowers or doing some other light, pleasant work, their
attention will be diverted from themselves and their sufferings.
The more the patient can be kept out of doors, the less care will
he require. The more cheerful his surroundings, the more helpful
will he be. Shut up in the house, be it ever so elegantly furnished,
he will grow fretful and gloomy. Surround him with the beautiful
things of nature; place him where he can see the flowers growing and
hear the birds singing, and his heart will break into song in harmony
with the songs of the birds. Relief will come to body and mind. The
intellect will be awakened, the imagination quickened, and the mind
prepared to appreciate the beauty of God’s word.
In nature may always be found something to divert the atten-
tion of the sick from themselves and direct their thoughts to God.
Surrounded by His wonderful works, their minds are uplifted from
the things that are seen to the things that are unseen. The beauty of
nature leads them to think of the
“He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have
no might he increaseth strength.”
Isaiah 40:29
.
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heavenly home, where there will be nothing to mar the loveliness,
nothing to taint or destroy, nothing to cause disease or death.
Let physicians and nurses draw from the things of nature, lessons
teaching of God. Let them point the patients to Him whose hand