DOTS CONNECTED

Having made it through a third biweekly session of my second chemotherapy experience, I am nicely approaching the First Day of Winter and the Centre Ice Line of my twelve-week-long skate in the Arena of Oncology. Happily, and with thanks to the Lord, I am able to report that I seem to be escaping the majority of side-effects.

In related news, my general commitment to focus on the liquid part of every half-filled glass of water deters me from focussing on my list of actual cancer-related losses, but in fact I do find a certain value in sometimes taking a look at the non-sunny side of things. When I do, what I see is a suggestive connection between what I have lost and what I know to be a prominent detail in the general plan of God for the life of any one who like me has "bowed the knee" and now believes that Jesus Christ is Lord.

The fact is, this suggestive connectivity predates the medical adventure I am having. If I think back to being the man I was when I moved to London, now that I am (chronologically) twice the man I used to be, I admit to my embarrassment that I was as a Thirty-year-old Man actually quite proud of a number of things, including my very blue eyes, my very thick blonde hair and my pretty-darn-fast marathon times. These were a few of my favorite things, and three of the things I have loved and lost, or for a time, thought I was losing.

And what happened to them? After running four marathons in the years of 1979 to 1982, I took the next fourteen years off and then in 1997 returned to the sport to discover that I wasn't up to running that distance with any sort of quickness any more. "Hm." Disappointing. By then, my blonde hair was thinning and my hairline was receding. Double "Hm." I was a man in my mid-40's, beginning to run out of things (secretly) to brag about. And the blue eyes? I spent the first ten months of 2011 growing an (undetected) pituitary tumour and wondering about going blind (which I was told I might be) -- and thinking about wearing permanently a pair of Stevie Wonder sunglasses, thus effectively removing my blue eyes from the equation and from my (secret) Bragging List. (Not insignificantly, my Pituitary Surgery of December 2011 was a rip-roaring success, my eyesight was saved and my Stevie Wonder-Sunglasses Strategy happily became a thing of my past. By the kindness of God, not all bad dreams come true.)

And then it was April 2013. Enter Cancer -- and I was served up a list of Six Things, six cancer treatments "all of which have to go very well." With 2 1/2 down and 3 1/2 to go, I (privately) observe that each one so far has brought to the Party a new Limitation or Impediment or Loss -- and so further shortened my personal (private) list of Bragging Rights, following the pattern by which, for example, for the eleven years (1997 to 2007) in which I returned to running marathons (increasingly unquickly), I (secretly) prided myself on my noticeably flat stomach, my decently muscular legs and my race-ready leanness, and by which, for the seven months since Cancer walked on stage, that Summer Radiation and these Winter chemo treatments, that September surgery and those two-week-long hospital stays have rendered my stomach less flat, my legs less muscular, my running barely existent and me twenty pounds heavier. Again I say, "Hm."

And now I connect the Dots on the timeline of my life, especially the Dot that was the "Secretly-Braggy-Young-Me-at-Thirty" to the Dot that is the Now-Limited-Now-Impeded-Now-Middle-Aged-Me-at-Fifty-Nine. What I see is that the Limitations and Impediments and Losses I have experienced these years -- and this year -- have conspired -- or I could say -- have all been used by the Great and Gracious Conspirator Himself to "work all things together for good for those who love God, for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son." (Romans 8:28,29)

Less to brag about CAN mean and should mean less braggy. And less braggy CAN mean and should mean more Christlike, having "this mind … which is ours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God … emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross." (Philippians 2:5-8) With the details of my life as evidence, I can say that evidently, God's commitment to conform his people to the image of Christ and to make us more Christlike in charactar is what has connected the Dots between what I used to be, for better and for worse to what I am now and to what God intends me to become when I (at some time, soon or not-so-soon) arrive at the Day of my Death and the Day in which I stand before God.

This I find is the certain value in sometimes taking a walk down the non-sunny side of the street. By God's generally gentle, always kindly and never random handling of my sicknesses and my health, my personal losses are gains and, it seems, the gains are usually pretty plainly purposeful.

NEVER SURE

In a post on April 28, 2010 ["Walking through graveyards"], I wrote: "It's been two weeks since, in the launch of a short sermon series, I talked for a bit about walking in 'my' graveyard." That was 3 1/2 years ago, and since then, not to put too fine a point on it, Death has twice come "knock, knock, knocking on my door" and I am more convinced now than I was then that "being clear on the fact of my own mortality increases my sense of the value of a day." Christmas Day, for example: now less than three weeks away.

This Christmas Day will be the 40th that Deb and I have experienced together. A big round biblical number. As we've been working our way through our preparations for this particular edition of the Big Day, the unspoken (but not always unspoken!) awareness we share is that this Christmas Day actually might be our last. The reality is: if this cancer of mine IS going to win this war, it's likely do so in 2014.

And how does this startling possibility affect this year's Christmas? What I am finding is that, to varying degrees, the possibility makes every piece of Christmas preparation and celebration taste sweeter. At least, it's the sweetness of each Christmas thing that I'm noticing. As usual, we bought a Christmas tree. As usual, we arranged with our next-door neighbour to help us carry it into the house and stand it up in the usual place. (We always buy a tall and therefore heavy tree.) With the usual decorations, we decorated the tree and the room in which the tree always stands. And every December day, I pour the tree a large jug of water. And this Christmas, what I am noticing is that every celebrational step we take has a sweetness to it. Not a new sort of sweetness. Not even a new amount of sweetness. I'm just noticing the sweetness more.

My 3 1/2 year old "graveyard" post included the famous words of the 17th century preacher Richard Baxter. "I preached as never sure to preach again, and as a dying man to dying men." I first came across this sentence 3 1/2 decades ago, long before any life-and-death health problems began to knock, but it has ever since been a good guide to me, strongly encouraging me to see any and every opportunity to preach as a not-to-be-wasted-because-quite-possibly-my-last-such-opportunity, and also quite-possibly-the-last-sermon-that-someone-in-the-audience-will-listen-to. I have found that being again and again reminded of my mortality, the mortality common to us all, has always been worthwhile, and has never soured but always sweetened the experience of standing before a group of people as the preacher. This Christmas, the same thinking is having the same sweetening effect on every traditional and celebrational move I make.

We human beings are fragile creatures. People are struck down unexpectedly every day of the year, sometimes in the most unlikely and least predictable way. The same 2010 blog post also included a reference to one of the "resolutions" of Jonathan Edwards, written in 1722 at the age of 19! "RESOLVED: To live with all my might while I do live."

The sobering fact is, this Christmas might be anyone's last. So let us all prepare for this year's Christmas with all our might, being careful to notice and to taste and to treasure the sweetness of every detail. And let us once again celebrate the birth of Jesus, the Ruler of the kings of the earth, as never sure to celebrate it again.