First, dear Mother, by God’s grace you well know by now that this sickness of yours is [God’s] fatherly, gracious chastisement. It is a quite small chastisement in comparison with that which he inflicts upon the godless, and sometimes even his own dear children, when one person is beheaded, another burned, a third drowned, and so on. And so all of us must sing: “For Thy sake we are being daily killed and regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” This sickness therefore should not distress or depress you. On the contrary, you should accept it with thankfulness as being sent by God’s grace; [you should] recognize how slight a suffering it is—even if it be a sickness unto death—compared with the sufferings of his own dear Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, who did not have to suffer on behalf of himself, as we have to do, but who suffered for us and for our sins. (Luther’s Works, v. 50, p.18)