ONE ELEPHANT PER ROOM

As I was saying, day after day, I lie on the Tanning Bed, (face down, etc.), becoming more and more a man with a certain glow. It is now Day 18 in a series of 28. As the Radiation Persons work on what's wrong with my nether parts, I myself work up at the other end of me. As I was saying, I start this by quoting to myself Psalm 16. It begins, and so I begin, like this. "Preserve me, O God, for in you I take refuge.” It's a great opener, and a great statement of faith in God's willingness and ability to see me through this. Moments later, I am at verses 5 and 6. "… you hold my lot. The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places…" True confession. I find that quoting these two verses with conviction calls for more faith than does verse 1. And here is why. I am a man with a problem. A big problem. I've got cancer. Verses 5 and 6 point out to me that the great big External Beam Radiation Thing making all the noise and doing all the work is not the only big thing in the room. There is also a Sizeable Elephant.

From my point of view (But mind you, I am lying face down and my face is in a large cloth-covered doughnut of a thing), the Elephant in the room is the fact that I am trusting God to preserve me from a problem that God COULD have but DIDN'T prevent me from getting in the first place. So what about verses 5 and 6? I think they are painting an Old Testament picture of the Promised Land being divvied up to individual Israelites by the casting of lots (Roughly equivalent to the rolling of dice). What the psalmist is saying is that he likes the property lines he's received and that he credits God, not anyone or anything else, for getting him such pleasant places to live and work in. From where I lie, this means that where I lie, day by day, is not a random detail having nothing to do with God's plan for my life, but rather an intentional detail loaded up with significance and purpose. [Jumping from one Psalm of David to another, we can read David saying to God, "You search out my path and my lying down (My lying down. Aha!) and are acquainted with all my ways (Not none, not some, but all my ways!) … in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them."]

What I have here is an Elephant not to be ignored. The Bible never explains that some thing that has happened (To me, for example) was not supposed to. It never says that what happens to an actual human being (Me, for example) was never supposed to happen but just couldn't be prevented. It never pictures God sending condolences or making apologies or saying "Oops." What the Bible DOES say, over and over again, in many different phrases, is that "whatever the Lord pleases, he does in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all deeps." Of course, a question comes to the mind of any thoughtful Elephant Observer. "What possibly could be the significance and purpose in some guy (Me, for example) getting cancer?" Here, the obvious question is followed promptly by a biblical answer. "Those who love God and are called according to his purpose are predestined to become conformed to the image of God's Son" and "the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives." These are policies I cannot object to. I don't think I ever assumed that my becoming Christlike would involve tiny tweaks to my character. I don't think it ever seemed to me unlikely that God would find it appropriate to discipline and chasten me. I think that the longer I live, the more I get the point of such biblical statements as "Before I was afflicted I went astray … It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes."

So there I lie, day by day, arriving once again at verses 5 and 6. And what I have come to see is that the faith expressed in those two sentences is the Elephant Gun that has been issued to us. The fact is, there is a Sizeable Elephant in every troubled person's room. We all have our stuff. It's one thing (and a great thing) to be able to trust God to preserve us in, and to get us out, of our troubles. It's a more foundational great thing to be able to trust God about the fact that we got into our troubles in the first place. And when we let the Word of God be our guide and we come to understand and to believe that God has his reasons for having things go the way they go, we learn to "count it all joy" when we "meet trials of various kinds." That is the way James wrote about in the New Testament. King David, on the other hand, said the same thing this way (to conclude Psalm 16),"Therefore my heart is glad, and my whole being rejoices; my flesh also dwells secure. For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol, or let your holy one see corruption. You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore."