The following is the response of a Christian in a responsible position of public service to an interviewer's question about how he was dealing with a diagnosis of spreading cancer. I have suppressed his name in order to remove any positive or negative reaction you may have based upon his political alignment. He speaks here not as one with political or social views, but as a person with deep Christian faith. It moved me as few articles I have read in recent months. So I pass it on to you as a "bonus" to my current blog series on the Gospel of Luke.
"Those of us with potentially fatal diseases—and there are millions
in America today—find ourselves in the odd position of coping with our
mortality while trying to fathom God's will. Although it would be the
height of presumption to declare with confidence "What It All Means",
Scripture provides powerful hints and consolations. The first is that
we shouldn't spend too much time trying to answer the why questions:
Why me? Why must people suffer? Why can't someone else get sick? We
can't answer such things, and the questions themselves often are
designed more to express our anguish than to solicit an answer.
I don't know why I have cancer, and I don't much care. It is what it
is a plain and indisputable fact. Yet even while staring into a mirror
darkly, great and stunning truths begin to take shape. Our maladies
define a central feature of our existence: We are fallen. We are
imperfect. Our bodies give out.
But despite this , or because of it , God offers the possibility of
salvation and grace. We don't know how the narrative of our lives will
end, but we get to choose how to use the interval between now and the
moment we meet our Creator face-to-face.
Second, we need to get past the anxiety. The mere thought of dying
can send adrenaline flooding through your system. A dizzy, unfocused
panic seizes you. Your heart thumps; your head swims. You think of
nothingness and swoon. You fear partings; you worry about the impact
on family and friends. You fidget and get nowhere. To regain footing,
remember that we were born not into death, but into life, and that the
journey continues after we have finished our days on this earth. We
accept this on faith, but that faith is nourished by a conviction that
stirs even within many non believing hearts an intuition that the
gift of life, once given, cannot be taken away. Those who have been
stricken enjoy the special privilege of being able to fight with their
might, main, and faith to live how their days may be numbered.
Third, we can open our eyes and hearts. God relishes surprise. We want
lives of simple, predictable ease , smooth, even trails as far as the
eye can see, but God likes to go off-road. He provokes us with twists
and turns. He places us in predicaments that seem to defy our
endurance and comprehension , and yet don't. By His love and grace,
we persevere. The challenges that make our hearts leap and stomachs
churn invariably strengthen our faith and grant measures of wisdom and
joy we would not experience otherwise.
'You Have Been Called'. Picture yourself in a hospital bed. The fog
of anesthesia has begun to wear away. A doctor stands at your feet; a
loved one holds your hand at the side. "It's cancer," the healer
announces.
The natural reaction is to turn to God and ask him to serve as a
cosmic Santa. "Dear God, make it all go away. Make everything
simpler." But another voice whispers: "You have been called." Your
quandary has drawn you closer to God, closer to those you love, closer
to the issues that matter , and has dragged into insignificance the
banal concerns that occupy our "normal time."
There's another kind of response, although usually short- lived; an
inexplicable shudder of excitement, as if a clarifying moment of
calamity has swept away everything trivial and tinny, and placed
before us the challenge of important questions.
The moment you enter the Valley of the Shadow of Death, things
change. You discover that Christianity is not something doughy,
passive, pious, and soft. Faith may be the substance of things hoped
for, the evidence of things not seen. But it also draws you into a
world shorn of fearful caution. The life of belief teems with
thrills, boldness, danger, shocks, reversals, triumphs, and
epiphanies. Think of Paul, traipsing though the known world and
contemplating trips to what must have seemed the antipodes (Spain),
shaking the dust from his sandals, worrying not about the morrow, but
only about the moment.
There's nothing wilder than a life of humble virtue , for it is
through selflessness and service that God wrings from our bodies and
spirits the most we ever could give, the most we ever could offer, and
the most we ever could do.
Finally, we can let love change everything. When Jesus was faced with
the prospect of crucifixion, he grieved not for himself, but for us.
He cried for Jerusalem before entering the holy city. From the Cross,
he took on the cumulative burden of human sin and weakness, and begged
for forgiveness on our behalf.
We get repeated chances to learn that life is not about us, that we
acquire purpose and satisfaction by sharing in God's love for others.
Sickness gets us partway there. It reminds us of our limitations and
dependence. But it also gives us a chance to serve the healthy. A
minister friend of mine observes that people suffering grave
afflictions often acquire the faith of two people, while loved ones
accept the burden of two people's worries and fears.
'Learning How to Live'. Most of us have watched friends as they
drifted toward God's arms not with resignation, but with peace and
hope In so doing, they have taught us not how to die, but how to live.
They have emulated Christ by transmitting the power and authority of
love.
I sat by my best friend's bedside a few years ago as a wasting cancer
took him away. He kept at his table a worn Bible and a 1928 edition of
the Book of Common Prayer. A shattering grief disabled his family,
many of his old friends, and at least one priest. Here was an humble
and very good guy, someone who apologized when he winced with pain
because he thought it made his guest uncomfortable. He retained his
equanimity and good humor literally until his last conscious moment.
"I'm going to try to beat [this cancer]," he told me several months
before he died. "But if I don't, I'll see you on the other side."
His gift was to remind everyone around him that even though God
doesn't promise us tomorrow, he does promise us eternity, filled with
life and love we cannot comprehend , and that one can in the throes of
sickness point the rest of us toward timeless truths that will help us
weather future storms.
Through such trials, God bids us to choose: Do we believe, or do we
not? Will we be bold enough to love, daring enough to serve, humble
enough to submit, and strong enough to acknowledge our limitations?
Can we surrender our concern in things that don't matter so that we
might devote our remaining days to things that do?
When our faith flags, he throws reminders in our way. Think of the
prayer warriors in our midst. They change things, and those of us who
have been on the receiving end of their petitions and intercessions
know it.
It is hard to describe, but there are times when suddenly the hairs
on the back of your neck stand up, and you feel a surge of the Spirit.
Somehow you just know: Others have chosen, when talking to the Author
of all creation, to lift us up, to speak of us!
This is love of a very special order. But so is the ability to sit
back and appreciate the wonder of every created thing. The mere
thought of death somehow makes every blessing vivid, every happiness
more luminous and intense. We may not know how our contest with
sickness will end, but we have felt the ineluctable touch of God.
What is man that Thou art mindful of him? We don't know much, but we
know this: No matter where we are, no matter what we do, no matter how
bleak or frightening our prospects, each and every one of us who
believe, each and every day, lies in the same safe and impregnable
place, in the hollow of God's hand."
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