THROUGH THICK AND THINNING

This post, and those that follow it, can be found here.

HEADS IN CLOUDS

I have now made it 2/3's of the way through this 12-week chemotherapy regimen that I call Thing #3. It's going very well, it seems, as did Thing #1 and Thing #2. That is, the many possible side-effects I have been warned about have for the most part failed to materialize, and I continue to feel and (weirdly look) quite healthy. When asked, I say that, by the the kindness of the Lord, everything seems to be going very well. The key word is "seems."

Yesterday, I had another CT-scan. It was scheduled exactly one week before I meet with my friendly neighbourhood oncologist to hear what the scan has revealed, specifically what it reveals about the eleven cancerous lesions living for a time in my liver. For exactly seven days then, seven including this one, I live and move and have my being in a cloud: a cloud of not knowing what exactly is going on inside me. Having by now become a Wily Veteran of London's various CT-scan facilities, I've walked in this exact cloud before, and I don't like it at all. What I don't like exactly is not knowing what a number of people here in London DO know about me and my liver, despite the fact that everyone of them is less attached to my liver than I am.

On a related note, The Cloude of Unknowyng is an anonymous work of Christian mysticism written in the second half of the 14th century (hence the strange spelling.) Evidently, it's a spiritual guide to contemplative prayer which proposes that the only way to truly know God is to abandon all preconceived notions and beliefs or knowledge about him and to be courageous enough to surrender mind and ego to the realm of unknowingness, at which point, the unknown author assures us, we begin to glimpse the true nature of God. So says Wikipedia. And that's all I know about that particular classic piece of Christian literature other than what is stated in the brief excerpt included in the Wikipedia article:

"For He can well be loved, but he cannot be thought. By love he can be grasped and held, but by thought, neither grasped nor held. And therefore, though it may be good at times to think specifically of the kindness and excellence of God, and though this may be a light and a part of contemplation, all the same, in the work of contemplation itself, it must be cast down and covered with a cloud of forgetting."

This brief description and short quotation may be too little to judge by and it might be quite unfair of me to do so anyway, but nevertheless I AM putting myself down as Not Interested in further spiritual direction from this unknown spiritual guide. It's specifically what I DO know about God that keeps the peace of Christ ruling in my heart. And it is specifically thinking about God that strengthens my heart and mind regarding what I am unable to see and know while my head is in this cloud.

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies endure forever. According to the riches of his grace, God works all things according to the counsel of his will. His people have been born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and have been granted an inheritance which is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven by God's power as we are guarded through faith for a salvation that is ready to be revealed at the last time.

The truth is, we all walk through life, one week at a time, with our heads in a cloud of unknowing. No one knows very much at all about what's really going on. We all live in some state of fog about what adventures are still awaiting us and about how long it will be until we stand before our Creator and Judge to give him an account of ourselves. But it's what we CAN know about the nature of God that can keep our hearts and minds at peace, with that peace that surpasses all understanding. And it is as we keep thinking about God -- about what he has done for us and what he is doing for us and what he has promised us that we are loving him with heart and soul and strength and mind, just as our Lord Jesus Christ has commanded us.

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.

A CERTAIN MAN

For better or for worse, I have been this church's pastor for years and years and years. One of the great advantages of staying so long is that I hardly ever have to say, "Hm. We've never experienced THIS before." As it happens, I did say those very words this past Sunday when for the first time in 29 years, the Worship Services were called because of snow.

Driving home at the strange Sunday morning hour of 10:00 a.m., I was thinking about the Morning Services that were evidently not meant to be. As my thoughts then shifted to the week ahead, with a Tuesday morning appointment with the oncologist and my Friday morning reservation in the Chemotherapy Suite, it occurred to me that this Sunday morning was a parable: a parable about me...

"A certain man pastored a very kindly and respectful congregation for many years. And it came to pass that one particular week, he prepared a Sunday sermon to preach to the congregation, as for those many years he usually did. And he did so diligently for over the years two related truths had been made very clear to him: that a good sermon can do some people some good, and that not all sermons are created equal, some of them turning out to be not very good at all. When Saturday evening came to pass, as for many years it always had, he beheld that every necessary Sunday morning thing was prepared (his notes and the congregation's Outline and the slide show and the projectionist's notes and the Order of Service), the pastor said his Saturday evening prayers, as he usually always did. And so he committed the entire endeavour to the Lord, asking God to make use of his efforts of the week and his efforts of the morning to come to do the people at least some good.

And it came to pass on the morrow that it was decided that the sermon must not be preached because, as the saying goes, the snow must go on. And so the pastor drove home, for the evil Bureaucratic Empire had once again suspended its suspension of his Driver's License [but that's a parable for another time.] And verily, as he drove, the pastor reflected on the truth that although he did not after all receive the privilege of offering the sermon to the church family, even though it might have done some of them some good, he HAD in fact offered the entire endeavour to the Lord. And that, he concluded, must be good enough."

Meanwhile back in Real Life, I meet again this week with my faithful and attentive oncologist, who always looks at me (and talks to me) as if I were a man more likely to die of cancer than to survive cancer, as in his professional opinion he thinks I am. And as I do, I will reflect on the truth that in fact I may not actually receive the privilege of pastoring this church for the next ten years, as I am more than willing to live long enough to do. And I will remember to say to myself, as we have been told we ought to say: "If the Lord wills, I shall live and do this or that." [James 4:15]

But I CAN offer the entire endeavour to the Lord. And that, I conclude, must be good enough.

WAR OR PEACE

My first chemotherapy experience (This past June and July) began exactly 69 years after D-Day.

Without really planning to, I approached the start of this second set of chemo treatments as I was re-reading Stephen Ambrose's fascinating book "D-Day, June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II." And so it comes to pass. I am again loaded up with tendencies to compare my personal medical adventures to the Second World War. I apologize to my friends and acquaintances with Mennonite backgrounds, but here I go again. Except that it now occurs to me that a better military comparison would be to America's "War Between the States" (1861-1865) for the battles taking place inside me are much more of a civil than an international war.

Cancer turns a person's body parts into deadly enemies. My gut-wrenching September surgery (Non-technically known on this blog as "Thing #2") was prompted by the medical opinion that, in my case, the Battle of the Rectum was basically over, and that cancer had won, and that desperate measures were now called for to stop my cancer from winning this war. Now the "theatre of war" has shifted because my enemy has established a beachhead in my liver. Subsequently, my new chemotherapy (The "Folfox Regimen," if you care to know) is designed to destroy those traitorous and deadly "hepatic" rebels before they get themselves organized enough to destroy me.

In what I would say is his best and most important book ("The Everlasting Man"), G.K. Chesterton writes that “a good war is better than a bad peace.” Being convinced that he is right on this point was a big help to me and Deb in resisting last week's irrational temptation to phone the good guys at the London Regional Cancer Program and inform them that, in view of how strong and healthy I am feeling, we decided to decline their kind offer of more chemotherapy. In the words of GKC, that would be choosing a "bad peace" over a "good war." It would have been a really bad idea to do so since you can't really count on cancer cells to do the honourable thing and slip away peaceably when they begin to feel unwelcome.

Now here's the thing. Cancer is not the only cause of such an up-close-and-personal civil war. And cancer patients are not the only people who need to be careful about choosing a bad peace. In fact, there are many variations on this theme, and many internal wars that it would be good to declare and bad to avoid. Here's Paul the apostle on the subject. "But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do." (Galatians 5:16,17 ESV)

Thickening the plot, let's agree that ignoring our own rebellious "desires of the flesh" can quite naturally lead to the same Chestertonian choice (Some sort of war or some sort of peace) in our marriages, in our relationships with our children and our parents, in our church life, in our friendships and in our work experience. Yikes!

In the hope of being helpful, I turn back to my post of June 26, in which I quoted a 17th-century preacher and theologian named John Owen on the topic of waging war, that is, a good civil war, on our indwelling sins. Let's notice that Owen just assumes that we will choose war rather than peace. “Let no man think to kill sin with a few easy or gentle strokes. He who has once smitten a serpent, if he follow not on his blow until it be slain, may repent that ever he began the quarrel. And so is he who undertakes to deal with sin but pursues it not constantly to the death … Do you make it your daily work? Be always at it whilst you live; cease not a day from this work; be killing sin or it will be killing you.”

This is plainly an important truth -- and not to be ignored. The only cancer you can be sure of not being killed by is a cancer that, by God's grace, you (and your medical friends) have managed to kill first. And so I declare, five days into my new twelve weeks of "Folfox" chemotherapy: "Bring it on!"

Likewise, the only sins of the mind and heart we are at all safe from are those sins (and inclinations to sin) that, by God's grace, we have successfully killed -- or at least have captured as prisoners-of-war and are diligently keeping very carefully guarded. "Be always at it whilst you live!"

GOOD NEWS FOR THE REALLY, REALLY LUCKY

We met with the surgeon this week. He was quite encouraged and so quite encouraging. On the basis of the good results of Thing #1 (the Summer Radiation) and Thing #2 (my September Surgery), he calls me "an excellent candidate" for a Liver Resection (which will be Thing #4, in March 2014, with the likelihood of a second Liver Surgery, which would be Thing #5, later that year). Thing #4 is set for four weeks or so after Thing #3, which will be six biweekly courses of Intensive Chemotherapy beginning on November 15th. On a related note, this very skilful surgeon, who Deb and I admire and appreciate very much, raised my odds of survival to 30%, explaining that, of course, it all depends upon me being "very very lucky."

So here I sit, three weeks prior to the beginning of Thing #3, with an estimated one-in-three chance of making it alive through this whole experience. One in three. I am now only twice as likely to die of this cancer than to survive it. (Well, ALMOST one in three. I now dream of being declared "33 1/3," which would both be a further improvement of my chances AND would make me feel like an old, long-playing record.)

And what do I do with these new odds? There are two things I DON'T do. I don't trust in them, which I have explained already. And I also don't ignore them. What I DO is attempt to grasp them, in order to avoid moving into the Land of Denial.

I have two principal reasons for this. Firstly, I am striving to grasp this estimation of my odds so that if, at any time in the months ahead, things begin to go bad for me -- and continue to do so -- and I really do begin to die of cancer, I won't be at all surprised.

Secondly, if Things #3 and 4 (and possibly #5) also all go well, and I emerge from all of this as a Cancer Survivor, I would like to be clear about what a great thing God has done for me. And if it happens, it will come as the answer to many hundreds and maybe even thousands of prayers from many wonderfully caring people located all over the world, and I do intend to be appropriately appreciative to them as well.

Meanwhile, the excellent and caring surgeon waits to have another surgical go at me next March, and hopes that I do turn out to be "really, really lucky." In his professional skills and his devotion to his patients, this man really is a prince among men, which brings me to the psalm I read this morning.

Psalm 146:3-5 ESV
Put not your trust in princes, in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation… Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord his God...

HARD PRESSED

Some good news this week. Yesterday we learned that the Pathology People have concluded that my gut-wrenching surgery (now four weeks ago) did manage to remove all the cancer from my nether parts. Meanwhile, the next set of chemotherapy treatments (declaring war on the cancer in my liver) begins in four weeks. So here, at the half-way point between my Previous Big Thing (Thing #2) and my Next Big Thing (Thing #3), I am mulling over something that the Apostle Paul wrote about himself.

Put me down as a big fan of the Apostle Paul. In my personal "Parade of the Giants" (The procession through history of my favourite great examples of faith in Christ), Paul is the man walking at the front of the parade. It's right that I should admire him, for deliberately imitating Paul is a repeated New Testament instruction (e.g. 1 Corinthians 4:16 and 11:1; Philippians 3:17 and 4:9; 2 Thessalonians 3:9.) These days, I have been thinking a lot about the exemplary statements he wrote to the church at Philippi. He wrote these words from a prison cell, probably in Rome, as he waited to learn if the Next Big Thing he was about to receive was going to be a Roman execution or a "Get Out of Jail" card. While he waited, he wrote on the topic of maybe and maybe not dying very soon. Remarkably, he described himself as "hard-pressed between the two."

Philippians 1:20-26 ESV
... it is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell. I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. But to remain in the flesh is more necessary on your account. Convinced of this, I know that I will remain and continue with you all, for your progress and joy in the faith, so that in me you may have ample cause to glory in Christ Jesus, because of my coming to you again.

So there was this remarkable man, thinking through the two likely outcomes of his imprisonment and declaring himself to be "hard pressed between the two." From Paul's point of view, "to depart and be with Christ" was the "far better" option, but "to remain in the flesh" was "more necessary" -- for the Philippians and for many similar groups of first-century Christians dependent upon him.

For me, the art of using the apostle Paul as an example requires never losing sight of the important fact that he was a 1st century apostle and I am something very much else. This being the case, there is an important contrast between his expectation of his immediate future and my expectation of mine. I believe that it is exactly THIS difference that brought Paul to a certainty about not dying any time soon, a certainty that I am very sure I have no corresponding right to assume. Paul's conviction that he would "remain and continue" with the Philippians for the sake of their "progress and joy in the faith" does NOT entitle me to any sort of similar certainty about what happens to me next, for Paul was almost unique, one of a small number of foundational 1st century church leaders: chosen servants of Christ with a very specific, historic calling.

Still, Paul's "teaching" and "conduct" and "aim in life" and "faith" and "patience" and "love" and "steadfastness" and "persecutions" and "sufferings" are set out in the New Testament as examples for us to imitate (2 Timothy 3:10,11). And he considered that the "gain" that comes from dying was "far better" than the "fruitful labor" that would come from living on. So here's what is occurring to me. As I keep busy doing "two things at the same time" (From the post of May 31: "wholeheartedly fighting for my life and trusting God and praying with all my heart for strength and health and healing and a long life, while at the same time, quietly and peacefully accepting the reality that this might in fact be the beginning of the end of my life..."), I am being called BOTH to prepare myself for the upcoming chemotherapy-based battle for continued life on earth AND sincerely to prefer "to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better."

Although Paul's personal certainty does not entitle me to assume that I am NOT going to die any time soon, even for the sake of additional "fruitful labor," his example directs me to try on both dying and not dying very soon AND to live in a genuine state of being "hard-pressed between the two" -- and it is Paul's example that shows me how.

Paul's "hard-pressedness" was pretty plainly the result of believing that, as he puts it, "to live is Christ." Plainly, he was a man so thoroughly dazzled by Jesus Christ that there was nothing in this world as attractive to him and as appealing to him as Christ himself. Paul was "hard-pressed between the two" because he loved Jesus so much that there was nothing in this world that appealed to him more than seeing, and being with, Christ. Not even serving Christ. As such, he accepted the fact of his own death with composure and peace. But he didn't just accept it. He embraced it as his personal preference. Such was his love for his glorious Lord Jesus.

And so should I. With no real certainty on the question of "maybe and maybe not dying very soon," I am being called to cultivate such a love for Christ that my personal preference really is "to depart and be with Christ," believing that "that is FAR better." And so I'm working on it. In my Bible reading and my praying, in my Bible study and my meditation, I'm seeking to see Christ so clearly and to love him so intensely that I really am "hard pressed between the two," as the Apostle Paul is my example.

REAL HAPPY. FOR NOW

I've been home from the hospital for ten days, my gut-wrenching surgery now almost three weeks old. And how am I feeling? I'm happy to report that I am actually very happy. Really. I am really very happy, which surprises some people, I think, considering my circumstances, I mean my ongoing nasty case of terminal cancer.

Now the thing is, I am not by any means a naturally gloomy fellow. I am happy to admit that I have inherited a good genetic dose of what C.S. Lewis refers to (on page 1 of "Surprised by Joy") as the "talent for happiness." But nevertheless I am quite prepared to defend the Institution of Happiness from all nay-sayers, especially those well-meaning detractors who fear that by succumbing to the charms of the thoroughly flighty and unreliable Blue Bird of Happiness, people like me are setting ourselves up for disappointment. Here is my defense.

Without a doubt, my current state of happiness is circumstantial. I freely admit that I am happy these days because the immediate effect of my surgery has been the definite taming of my nine-month long state of Gastrointestinal Chaos. Because of the surgery, I am no longer the slave of a really lousy bowel system and no longer frequently and pathetically held prisoner in any one of the Small Rooms in the house. Along with all of that, I am no longer bound to a restricted diet and so have recently rejoined the World-Wide League of Enthusiastically Committed Coffee Consumers. In all of that, the fact that my current happiness is circumstantial dampens my mood not a bit.

By definition, "happiness" is always circumstantial. The word is derived from the Old English word "hap," which means "chance" or "fortune." In fact, all "happiness" is a positively emotional response to the way things have "happened," that is, to what is sometimes referred to as being "lucky" or "fortunate." And here my defence makes a humble admission.

The word "happiness" is, in its origin, not so happy a term for the happy state of heart in question. Being people who believe in "God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy" (1 Timothy 6:17 ESV), it is more accurate for us to describe ourselves as "blessed." It's just that doing so fails to explain to people how happy we sometimes are So, back to my defense.

I take in stride the temporal nature of my happiness, knowing that no earthly circumstances are permanent. But still, "everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer. (1 Timothy 4:4,5 ESV).

Meanwhile, as I consider where my cancer is leading me: to several months of intense chemotherapy (beginning late in November, I think) and at least one more big surgery (this time to "resect" a substantial chunk of my cancerous liver), I accept the coming days of difficulty in the same spirit as I am just now accepting these happy days of strong black coffee. And, all the while, as it is set out in Psalm 16, "… my heart is glad, and my whole being rejoices … You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore." (Vss. 9-11 ESV)

Please don't worry about me and my current state of temporary, circumstantial happiness. I am very clear on the fact that FULLNESS of joy and PERMANENT pleasures are only found in the presence of God and at his right hand.

LOUSY ODDS AND AN EVEN HEARTBEAT

That charming stereotype we call "the Optimist" has sometimes been differentiated from his gloomy counterpart "the Pessimist" by his (or her) description of a glass of water that is, in fact, both half-full and half-empty. At last week's meeting with my oncologist, the good doctor told me that whereas, back in May, my chances of surviving this cancer were in his opinion very bleak, he now upgrades my odds of survival to a solid 20%. Committed as I am to the Optimist's cheerful outlook, I can now say that my particular glass of water is apparently one-fifth full.

John Piper says "you will waste your cancer if you seek comfort from your odds rather than from God." He wrote this, just before his surgery for prostate cancer, in an excellent little article he entitled "Don't Waste Your Cancer" (which you can easily find by searching here) The fine print explains, "The design of God in your cancer is not to train you in the rationalistic, human calculation of odds. The world gets comfort from their odds. Not Christians … The aim of God in your cancer (among a thousand other good things) is to knock props out from under our hearts so that we rely utterly on him."

For this powerful piece of writing, I thank John Piper. And I think that his references to "the design of God" and "the aim of God" and "a thousand other good things" add up to a very important truth. As the Bible makes clear, the life of a human being is not, in fact, a thing of uncertain duration. That long-suffering, non-optimistic Old Testament man named Job was clear on this. He says to God, "Man who is born of a woman is few of days and full of trouble … his days are determined, and the number of his months is with you, and you have appointed his limits that he cannot pass…" (Job 14:1-5 ESV) And King David was on the same page. He writes "… in your book were written the days that were formed for me, every one of them, when as yet there was none of them." (Psalm 139:16 ESV [except that I rearranged the phrases for the sake of clarity] )

The point here is plain, I think. Every human life is long enough to accommodate every one of the good and pleasant things AND every one of the good but "full of trouble" things that God means THAT particular human being to experience. Life is always long enough for the purposes of God. Every human life, including mine.

So while some medically-knowledgeable people are giving me a 20% chance of being alive in a year or two, it will always remain a 100% certainty that I will live on in this world, in some state of sickness or of health, until every one of "the days that were formed for me" and my entire "number of months" have been lived, and until all of the designs and aims of God have been accomplished, and until "a thousand other good things" have been realized.

So there it is. I am a man with lousy odds, and they are against me. In fact, my odds are not even "even." But by God's great grace, against all odds, I am maintaining an even keel. And clothed with the righteousness of Christ, I am at peace, being assured by the Word of God that I will one day stand before my Judge and Maker with a 100% approval rating.

And the Word of God teaches me what to say: "Praise the Lord! Blessed is the man who fears the Lord, who greatly delights in his commandments … He is not afraid of bad news; his heart is firm, trusting in the Lord. His heart is steady; he will not be afraid until he looks in triumph on his adversaries." (Psalm 112:1,6-8 ESV)

READINESS

Two weeks from today, I will once again be the Special Guest at a meeting to be held in my honour in one of University Hospital's Operating Rooms. This will be my third surgery (Lifetime), with the great likelihood of two more surgeries to follow in the months to come.

This one being fourteen days from today, the words of England's 18th-century "Man of Letters" Samuel Johnson come to mind. "Depend upon it, Sir," he once said, "when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully." Although I've never been threatened with hanging, I AM finding that the same principle applies to gut-wrenching-surgery-deemed-necessary-because-of-a-serious-case-of-cancer. These days, I'm finding that my mind is being wonderfully concentrated, and that the advantage has everything to do with becoming ready for the inevitable.

It's just what Hamlet said, as he was trying to decide whether to be or not to be: "If it be now, ’tis not to come. If it be not to come, it will be now. If it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all." (Hamlet, Act V, Scene 2.) While I don't suppose that Shakespeare's Hamlet should be anyone's final authority on these matters of life and death, even if "the readiness" is NOT all, nevertheless attaining (and maintaining) such a genuine state of readiness IS a goal with a lot going for it.

The thing is, cancer patients aren't the only ones who are mortal. Dying may never be something a person looks forward to, but there is a perfectly good reason for every one of us to look ahead to it. "It is appointed for man to die once…"

These days, I'm working on staying clear on the sobering fact that if I DO manage, by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, to beat the odds, so that, in September 2018 (that is, five years from now), I am declared "Cancer-Free," I'll still be a guy who is going to die someday. "If it be not now, yet it will come." And of course, sometime, anytime, before my cancer gets around to doing to me what it is all set up to do, I could get run over by a cement truck or struck by lightning.

The writer of the Old Testament's Book of Ecclesiastes stated it plainly. "For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die… " (3:1,2 ESV). Day to day, one of the distinct advantages of this sort of readiness is the capacity to see every day, every hour, in fact every moment of every day, as a specific gift of God: one gift in a finite set of such gifts -- and so one not to be wasted. It seems to me that it really does help to be very clear about the fact that one day, one such moment will be the last one I get. And having no real clue about the exact date and time is no good excuse for putting the whole matter out of our minds.

So let us take a tip from Samuel Johnson, and concentrate. Wonderfully.

IN GOD WE TRUST. WITH ALL OUR GUTS

Mark 12:28-31 ESV
And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, asked him, “Which commandment is the most important of all?” Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ [Deuteronomy 6:4,5] The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ [Leviticus 19:18] There is no other commandment greater than these.”

Here in the Gospel of Mark (and also in Matthew 22 and Luke 10), Jesus identifies a whole-hearted, whole-souled, whole-minded, full-strength love for God as "the most important commandment." It's easy, I think, to see how it is, for in one simply-stated law, our ongoing obligation to the God who has made us, sustains us and offers to save us is thoroughly addressed. In the same breath, Jesus identifies as "the second" most important commandment our obligation to love our neighbour, that is, all the people in any kind of proximty to us.

This past Monday, having met for a second time with the surgeon who in June had turned me over for the summer to the care of two oncologists, Deb and I heard some not very good news about how much, that is to say, how little my six weeks of chemotherapy and radiation had actually accomplished. Contrary to what the early-August CT-scan seemed to indicate, the rectal tumour isn't really much smaller than it was in June and is almost certainly still inoperable. Surprisingly, the punch line of this bad news is not that I don't have an upcoming surgery after all. Instead, I have been scheduled for a four-hour surgery on Friday, September 20th: a procedure intended to prevent the prospect of a complete bowel obstruction. What this means in the long run is that my two oncologists now need to weigh in on the question of what other chemotherapy might be successful in shrinking, and so making operable, what presently remains unshrunk and inoperable. (Yikes.)

In the hours, and now the days, following the appointment, there has come to my mind what might be labelled "the third most important commandment." I am definitely free-styling here -- a questionable Bible study practice, to be sure -- but what I am thinking is this: since "the most important commandment" addresses our relationship with God and "the second most important" addresses our relationship with all of the people in our lives, a commandment that addresses our relationship to the details of our own lives, to our own challenges, to all our own stuff -- might possibly be the third most important commandment. So here, trying to be helpful, at least to my own disappointed self, is my shot at naming #3, extracted from the Old Testament as are the two commandments cited by the Lord as the first and second most important. What I'm suggesting is that the third most important commandment is this: "Trust God." Just trust God.

The Old Testament reference, of course, is Proverbs 3:5,6 ESV
Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him and he will direct your paths.

This is a very good and helpful instruction to me just now -- except that it's not my heart that I am concerned and uncertain about. Neither this upcoming surgery, or the surgery that may or may not follow the upcoming chemotherapy, is a matter of the heart. It's not my heart. It's my bowels. In just over three weeks, this surgeon, who is reputed to be very good at what he does, and certainly seems to be a very caring and knowledgeable man, is going to cut me wide open and temporarily, for the sake of the cause, disembowel me. To put it plainly, for a few hours this September, this man who I have only just met will hold in his hands my intestines, all of them, both the large and the small. And I've never even seen his resume. I don't even know if he wears gloves. And all the while, I'll be fast asleep and so unable to make suggestions or offer feed-back.

What I have here is a great demand for trust. And I have twenty-three days to get clear and okay on this, because, to use a technical medical term, these surgeries are going to be gut-wrenching.

Psalm 20:7 ESV
Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God.

So wrote King David in the days of ancient Israel. His point, I think, is that even in regard to our best assets and most high-tech advantages, it is God we should be trusting with all that concerns us. Even when the chariots are shiny and new and fully-loaded and the horses are fit and chomping at the bit, it is God we should acknowledge as the giver of all good gifts and the director of our paths and the healer of all our diseases.

What was true for King David in ancient Israel is true for me in modern south-western Ontario. Some trust in surgeons and some trust in oncologists, but, according to the third most important commandment, I will endeavour to trust in the Lord my God. With all my guts.

"GOD AND MY RIGHT"

One of my favourite scenes from The Chronicles of Narnia features Shasta (the boy in "The Horse and his Boy"), riding an awkwardly uncooperative horse (NOT the horse referred to in the title of the book, but another horse, which "had a very low opinion of Shasta"). That boy and that horse were riding through the mountain pass between Archenland and Narnia. The point in the scene is Shasta's alarming discovery "that someone or somebody was walking beside him. It was pitch dark and he could see nothing. And the Thing (or Person) was going so quietly that he could hardly hear any footfalls. What he could hear was the breathing. His invisible companion seemed to breathe on a very large scale, and Shasta got the impression that it was a very large creature."

In this, Shasta was right. His unintroduced walking companion, who waited to be spoken to before speaking himself, was none other than "Aslan, the great Lion, the son of the Emperor-over-the-sea, the King above all High Kings in Narnia." And with that great Lion at his side, this young boy (and that disappointed horse) walked through the mountain pass into Narnia without stumbling or falling or losing their way.

Last week's post featured Psalm 84:5-7, which says (ESV), "Blessed are those whose strength is in you, in whose heart are the highways to Zion... They go from strength to strength; each one appears before God in Zion." And I wrote, "These are powerful words and I feel their effect. And I notice them raising a personal, practical question. How am I doing at `more-or-less travelling successfully' in the direction of Zion"?

While being the first to say that I "see through a glass darkly," it does seem to me that I am these days managing to walk the path that has been set before me "without stumbling or falling or losing my way." What I DO see clearly is that, for this, I have the Lord to thank. I feel like Shasta, managing to stay on "the highway to Zion" and managing to keep moving forward because Someone ("on a very large scale") is walking beside me.

This mental image is so helpful and encouraging, I've been working on picturing it as clearly as possible, and the picture that's developing is a surprise to me. The surprise has to do with the frequent emphasis in the Book of Psalms on "the right hand," both the Lord's right hand and "my own."

As I have mentioned a time or two previously, Psalm 16 has been on my mind this summer. Verse 8 says, "I have set the Lord always before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken." Here, the Lord is at MY right hand. (Curiously, Aslan was on Shasta's left. Hm.)

I've also been thinking a lot of Psalm 63, and there, verse 8 reads, "My soul clings to you; YOUR right hand upholds me." This is not a rarely mentioned idea. For example, Psalm 139:9,10 declares: "If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and YOUR right hand shall hold me."

But Psalm 73:23 says "… I am continually with you; you hold MY right hand."

So here's the picture. Here's how the Book of Psalms is teaching me to picture my journey. I'm travelling along "the highway to Zion," sometimes in the dark, sometimes unable to see even the ground beneath my feet. And the Lord is holding MY right hand in HIS right hand.

So this is not quite like the Lion and Shasta (and that horse) walking side-by-side, shoulder-to-shoulder, both with eyes looking ahead although only the Lion sees the road clearly. Rather, "the boy" is walking this path with the Lord at his right hand. But the Lord is not facing the same direction as "the boy" but rather facing "the boy"; in fact, walking backwards along the path, not needing to be looking ahead but choosing to keep his eyes constantly fixed on my sometimes uncertain, sometimes confused face.

And here I must say that I am way too influenced by the Book of Revelation to picture Jesus, my walking companion, still dressed as a 1st-century Nazarene carpenter, but rather as we see him walking "in the midst of the lampstands, one like a son of man, clothed with a long robe and with a golden sash around his chest. The hairs of his head were white, like white wool, like snow. His eyes were like a flame of fire, his feet were like burnished bronze, refined in a furnace, and his voice was like the roar of many waters." (Revelation 1:13-15 ESV) AND as he is pictured on the white cloud in Revelation 14 AND riding the white horse in Revelation 19 AND seated on the great white throne in Revelation 20.

This is our Lord Jesus, now glorified. And he walks with me, step by step, day by day, on my right, holding my right hand securely in his right hand and so never unaware of how I am really doing. For this Jesus, my constant walking companion, is the King of kings and the Lord of lords, who does everything "on a very large scale." And he is watching me take every step and he is helping me to face every unknown and he is strengthening me to step forward into every new challenge that is mine on the highway to Zion.

A BIG UGLY BUG WITHOUT A STING

A while ago on this blog (May 31, 2013; "TWO THINGS AT ONE TIME"), I explained that "the trickiness I am working on" is, on the one hand, "to run hard toward my enemy, wholeheartedly fighting for my life and trusting God and praying with all my heart for strength and health and healing and a long life," WHILE ON THE OTHER HAND, "quietly and peacefully accepting the reality that this cancer might in fact be the beginning of the end of my life (as we know it), just as God has always intended."


So here and now, ten weeks later (and now in the second week of a six-week "Rest Period" prior to the surgery that comes next), I turn my attention again to that second thing, and think again about dying. About me dying. Deb and I are taking seriously the challenge of realistically facing my (possibly imminent) death and we are trusting the Lord for the strong faith required to do so bravely. On our wedding anniversary this year (May 28th), we planned my funeral (which somehow never occurred to us to do on any of our previous thirty-five anniversaries.) Later that week, we picked out and purchased two grave-sites in the cemetery of my choice. (If it looks like you're going first, you get to pick these things.) You'll have to excuse me if this sort of talk seems a little beyond the limits of good taste and polite conversation, but Deb and I are being stared at by a great big thing and we're trying not to blink.


But what kind of great big thing IS the prospect of my physical death? Surely, it is not a giant to be frightened of. Lately, I have come to see that it is the same sort of awkward and quite possibly painful reality as my physical birth. Neither physical birth or physical death is a lovely reality. (Evidently, I myself was born a pretty beat-up and pathetic looking baby. So I have been told.) But this comparison doesn't in itself make my physical death a giant to be frightened of.


The thing is, for the people of God, "chosen in Christ before the foundations of the earth and predestined to be adopted," death is a necessary experience. But don't take my word for it. Here's the apostle Paul on the subject of why we have to die.


1 Corinthians 15:50-55 ESV
I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood CANNOT inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body MUST put on the imperishable, and this mortal body MUST put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O DEATH, WHERE IS YOUR STING?”


Now there's a great question. Where is the sting of death? What happened to death's sting?


What I am seeing these days is that, for me, and the likes of me, death is a not a fee-fie-fo-fum giant. At the same time, it is not a beautiful or a lovely thing. To say that it is would be saying too much, and just making things up in an effort to make ourselves feel better.


So how is a man to think about his own death? These days, I'm thinking of it as a big ugly bug. And these days, it sits there, right in front of me, staring me in the face, poised and ready to pick me up and fly me away from everything and everyone I know and love by sight. But I face this big ugly bug without fear, for as it is written in God's Word, it has lost its sting. The sting of dying with all my sins unforgiven: gone. The sting of separation from the God who invented and personifies love and joy and peace: gone. Even the sting of separation from my loved ones is gone. (Well, sort of. But that's a topic for another day.)


So that's it. My physical death remains a big ugly bug of a thing, but it's lost its sting. And so my confidence, as Christ is my Saviour, is that when --not if, but when-- this big, ugly, non-terrifying but still-intimidating bug is given permission to take hold of me and fly me away, I'll see things as they really are, as if with new eyes.


I'll see that I'm being carried to meet my glorious Lord Jesus Christ face to face, ">the hairs of his head white, like white wool, like snow, his eyes like a flame of fire, his feet like burnished bronze, refined in a furnace, and his voice like the roar of many waters."


And with my new eyes, even the big ugly bug will look different to me, and I'll see that I'm actually being carried into the presence of God on the wings of an angel.


And even now, to all who have ears to hear, the Lord Jesus says, “Fear not, I am the first and the last, and the living one. I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades." (Revelation 1:14-18, ESV)

A VERY HAPPY COMPLICATION

This is about what I said in that post about my cancer being the "discipline and chastening of the Lord" (July 3). It has not been uncommon in the years I have pastored a church to be asked by some significantly troubled and spiritually sensitive soul if I thought that this pain and suffering was "the discipline of the Lord." It's usually worded as the question: "Am I being punished for some sin I have committed?"

My consistent practice, which I have never regretted, is to say something like this. "It would be unwise to dismiss the question without first giving it some careful attention. It just might be that some sin you have committed, or some habit of disobedience that you haven't addressed successfully, or addressed at all, is a part of God's purpose in bringing this pain and suffering into your life. But if you DO discern that God is drawing your attention to some sort of disobedience that you need to correct, it would be oversimplifying this difficult part of the story to think that THAT particular sin, or sinfulness, is all there is to it."

In the discussion that follows, the words of Jesus about the man born blind (John 9:3) sometimes come up. Logically so, for it seems like this is exactly the question that Jesus is answering, and he is answering the question with a "No." It DOES seem that the Lord is saying that the blind man's suffering has nothing at all to do with any sin, or all of the sins, that the man (or his parents!) had ever committed. Without thinking that I am daring to contradict what the Lord is saying, I still maintain that to use these words of Jesus as the entire answer to that senstive soul's specific question is to oversimplify a complicated matter.

Every case of significant human trouble is complicated, but not all the complications are bad ones. One really positive complication is that any one thing suffered by any one human being (You, for example) always has an impact on other people, especially the people who love that person (unless, of course, the person doing the suffering is on a desert island at the time, and never does make it off the island.)

If we believe that the details of God's sovereign purposes for each of his people are always his sovereign kindness and his sovereign wisdom towards them, that is, if we think biblically about the nature of God and the nature of our experiences, then this complication IS a happy one. A very happy one, especially regarding those loved ones that we deeply love. Not only is God working all things together for good for us, just because we ARE people who love him and who are called according to his purpose (Romans 8:28), but the things that God is bringing into our lives are always ALSO things that God is bringing into the lives of those who love us and who are suffering along with us. Therefore, our own hard and painful "things" are being "worked" by God not only for our good but also for the good of every one of those loved ones of ours who also love God and are called according to his purpose.

What this amounts to is that the Bible teaches us to believe that God's purposes are embedded in, and woven all through, the details of every one of our trials and tribulations, and calls us to understand that some of the purposes of God that are directly connected to our suffering have at least as much to do with our loved ones as they have to do with us, and in some cases, possibly more.

I think it's really worth noticing here that the Apostle Paul's very next words (Romans 8:29) explain that it is God's plan, and always has been God's plan, to conform every one of his people to the image of Christ. I think we should think of that as Paul's general summary of "the good" to which God is working all of "our things" out. This thought should be an encouragement to every suffering believer in Christ -- that your experience is accomplishing more good than just the good it is accomplishing in you. That some of the good that your experiences of pain and suffering are accomplishing is specifically God's "good and acceptable and perfect" gift to some of the people you love. I think it is a part of why it would always be oversimplifying the complicated story of your life to believe that your pain and suffering IS totally about the sin, or the continuing moral battles, in your life. Actually, nothing that God brings into your life is only about you.

I once stood beside the hospital bed of a young man (An enthusiastic servant of Christ employed in full-time ministry) who had very recently been suddenly and mysteriously struck down with a very serious medical problem. I couldn't help noticing that his mother was standing on the other side of the bed. I began to assure him that the "good and acceptable and perfect" purposes of God were embedded in, and woven all through, this experience, but I was passionately interrupted by his mother. As I remember it, although it was many years ago now, she pointed her finger right at me and said with great conviction, "Don't you dare suggest that what has happened to my son is because of something bad he has done!" A lively dialogue ensued, for at the time I also was a very young man. Her son listened intently, watching the whole thing the way you watch a tennis game. (It might have been the highlight of his day.)

Later, when his mother had left the room, he smiled at me and said, "My mother doesn't really know me very well." And then he told me that he had already figured out a direct connection between the nature of his suffering and a certain sin that he had not yet succeeded in overcoming. If he hadn't already figured that out, I would have told him to give some thought to the possibility of some such connection, and I would have encouraged him to go on believing that there WAS at least some sort of connection between this calamity and his sins and his sinfulness, even if he wasn't ever able to identify it.

To this very point, the author of the New Testament Letter to the Hebrews (in 12:4-7) quotes from the 3rd chapter of the Old Testament Book of Proverbs (Verses 11,12.)

In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons? “My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him. For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.” It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline?

And this, I believe, explains in part why I have cancer. I am aware enough of "the weakness of my flesh" to assume that, to some degree, my present and future pain and suffering is the Lord's chastening. The Father is teaching his always-glad-to-be-adopted but often-slow-to-obey child to obey him more promptly and more immediately. At any rate, my pain and suffering is always his discipline. The word MEANS "child-training."

By the way, right now this six-week Waiting Period is going pretty well. This past Monday, the first Monday of my waiting, I woke up very early feeling really very healthy. Way more healthy than I actually am, I think. It only lasted that day, but feeling good always does feel good under any circumstances. My warmest and fondest thanks to all of you who have been praying for me. It does seem to me that God in his sovereign kindness and wisdom is answering your prayers most wonderfully -- and I am thankful to him and to you.

JUST WAITING

Yesterday I visited the Tanning Salon for my 28th session and swallowed my 336th pink pill. With some sense of ceremony, I then stood in the reception area with my girls, mallet in hand, and gave the London Regional Cancer Program's Radiation Gong an enthusiastic whack, signifying to the other cancer patients and their relatives that, for me and for now, that whole business is now over with. A polite round of applause followed, as usual.


Thus endeth my six weeks of Chemo-and-Radiation Therapy, but apparently it doesn't end the radiation. Apparently, just as the roast keeps cooking for a while after it's taken out of the oven, so the tumour keeps glowing for a while after the tanning sessions are over. For two weeks, in fact. (Who would have guessed?)


And now a question comes to mind: "So?" The answer is, "I wait." I wait for two weeks for the radiation of my nether parts to cease, which takes me to the end of July. And then I wait for a few weeks more. In fact, now that Round One in this fight for my life is concluded, I begin Round Two: another six week (or so) Waiting Period in which the battlefield quiets down enough that the results of my 28 and my 336 can be discerned, by means of an MRI (to see what's become of the tumour) and a CT-Scan (to see what my liver has been doing for my summer vacation.) Following these two Dates with Destiny, Deb and I will have a chat with the oncologist to hear what he suggests is next. The obvious happy possibility (I mean, besides a miracle of God's healing, which I continue to pray for, and deeply appreciate your prayers for) is a surgery in September to remove the shrivelled-up tumour. And at the other end of the list of possibilities: a new regime of chemotherapy sessions, either designed to try again to shrink the tumour, or as palliative chemotherapy (An intimidating term!), if it seems that there's not much else that can be done.


So that's what's up for me for the next six-or-so weeks. I wait. I just wait in regard to the enormous uncertainty on my horizon. Just as do many people I know, because this is what life is like --- and because we all have our stuff. Obviously, we don't all have cancer or other life-and-death health problems, but we all have stuff. Some of this stuff isn't so much personal as interpersonal: a marital challenge, or a child-raising problem, or a difficulty with a friend, or a "work related" or "school related" burden. In the hope of being helpful to my fellow "stuff-bearers," I am glad to share what I have learned about waiting (with thanks to Clint Eastwood and the other makers of a 1960's film phenomenon called "spaghetti westerns.")


What's GOOD about waiting.
"Just waiting" is good when it builds character. It can develop patience and perseverance and, if we are waiting on God, it builds faith and hope, all of which are good and beautiful things.


What's BAD about waiting.
"Just waiting" turns bad when I start considering my perspective and my wisdom and my sense of timing and my opinion on what's best for me to be superior to God's. Who am I to say that a certain period of "just waiting" is going on too long? With a mistaken view of myself and of God, my confidence in God erodes, and so does my hope. Functionally, I become more and more a man "without hope and without God in the world." A very bad thing.


What's UGLY about waiting.
"Just waiting" turns ugly when my disapproval or discontentment with God's perspective and wisdom and sense of timing begins to embitter me, especially when it embitters me toward God. At that point, my doubts and unbelief begin to define me, and if "a gentle and quiet spirit is precious in the sight of the Lord," than surely an opposite state of mind and an opposite condition of heart is ugly to God. (Yikes!)


So here I wait. For about a month. And while the radiation continues to do its work on my lower end, I work on my heart and mind, believing that "just waiting" can be a good thing, and seeking to ensure that it is. Coming off of a month and a half experience in which I repeatedly quoted Psalm 16 to myself, I love and am helped by that psalm too much to let go of it now. But I am now taking on another favourite psalm. Over the years of trying to be a helpful pastor, I've recommended it to a lot of people and in many cases have loved to see what strength it supplies to a believing heart.


Psalm 27:1-3, 13-14 (NASB)
The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the defense of my life. Whom shall I dread? When evildoers came upon me to devour my flesh, my adversaries and my enemies, they stumbled and fell. Though a host encamp against me, my heart will not fear; though war arise against me, in spite of this I will be confident … I would have despaired unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; yes, wait for the Lord.


May the peace of God guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. And may the joy of the Lord be our strength.

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."

PINK PILLS FOR PALE PEOPLE

I grew up in Brockville. I was born in Kingston and I graduated from both high school and university in Kingston, but from the age of two until the end of Grade Twelve, I was a Brockville boy, and always glad to be. For one thing, Brockville is built on the banks of the spectacular St. Lawrence River. For another, Brockville was named after a genuine hero of the War of 1812, Sir Isaac Brock (although dying as he did in the Battle of Queenston Heights, he didn't live to hear that a little United Empire Loyalist town on the banks of the St. Lawrence River had re-named itself after him -- or that he had just been knighted.)


Not so much "a thing" for me but true nonetheless is that one of Brockville's first millionaires, a Victorian businessman and politician named George Fulford, made his fortune by acquiring the rights to market "Dr. Williams' Pink Pills for Pale People," which brings me to the subject of how else I am doing, that is, to the subject of chemotherapy.


Every day for the entire six weeks of my radiation regime, I swallow eight pink pills, four after breakfast and four after dinner. That's my chemotherapy and when all is said and done, that will be 336 pink pills "down the little red hatch." Truth be told, I have disliked every swallow. I admit that, as I am under doctor's orders to avoid direct sunshine, I am and will remain one of this summer's Pale People. But it's not doing without a suntan that I dislike. Nor is it the pink-nicity of the pills. It's the fact that they are poison. As Wikipedia puts it: "Traditional chemotherapeutic agents act by killing cells that divide rapidly, one of the main properties of most cancer cells. This means that chemotherapy also harms cells that divide rapidly under normal circumstances: cells in the bone marrow, digestive tract, and hair follicles." Hair follicles, I have found I can do without hair follicles but I am of a different mind concerning my bone marrow and my digestive tract.


So here I am, day by day, a Pale Person swallowing sixteen little Poison Pink Pills, and generally always creeped out by the experience. But I'm not at all inclined to turn away from the counsel of my doctors and from their choice of pills. I've been telling people for years that sometimes you have to pick your poison. These little pink pills are the poison I pick. All 336 of them. Not because I'm pale but because I've got cancer. The alarming truth is, if something (and/or SomeOne) doesn't kill it, it's going to kill me. The fact that the pink pills are deadly poisons is the whole point. We're talking about Poisonous Pills for a Poisoned Person.


Helpfully, the whole idea of fighting killers with killers is not new to me. For all my life, I have carried around within my body a whole army of killers: pride, self-centredness, lust, envy, spite, bitterness, mean-spiritedness, laziness. These poisons are very able to kill my friendships, my family relationships, my peace of mind and my reputation. From the days when I was a young boy growing up in Brockville, I have always had these deadly enemies at work within me, with many a battle to be won or lost. One of my original Nine Dead Men, John Owen (1616-1683) wrote powerfully on this topic. He was not only a man of deep thoughts but also of big words and so he liked to call it "mortification," and now my chemotherapy reminds me of what he wrote. “Let no man think to kill sin with few, easy, or gentle strokes. He who hath once smitten a serpent, if he follow not on his blow until it be slain, may repent that ever he began the quarrel. And so he who undertakes to deal with sin, and pursues it not constantly to the death" … "Do you mortify? Do you make it your daily work? Be always at it whilst you live; cease not a day from this work; be killing sin or it will be killing you.”


So thanks again for asking how I am doing. But how are you doing? Let us wisely pick our poison, or to change the metaphor, choose our weapons. And the chief weapon in the war against personal wickedness is the Bible, which describes itself as "a fire and a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces" and "a two-edged sword" that pierces, divides and discerns the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And let us trust the God of hope to strengthen us to fight fiercely and so to conquer everything that is positioned to conquer pale poisoned people like us.

HOW I AM DOING. REALLY

In answer to three frequently asked and always kindly meant questions: "How are you doing?" and "How are you feeling?" and "How are you doing really?", I now break my recent blog silence, with apologies to all the people who have popped these questions to me by email and text and Facebook message and then haven't received a word from me in response. I have been feeling the love, but also feeling too tired to reply individually to every kind soul who asks for a personal progress report. My new general level of fatigue is one reason why I haven't been responding to the question. The other reason is that, after ten trips to the Radiation Therapy Room, which I sometimes like to refer to as the Tanning Salon, (with 19 trips still to go), I have very little to report, other than that I am now tired all the time, and that I spend a lot of time in the very small rooms in my house. That's it.

On a related note however, I CAN blog about how I am doing, really, at those "two things at the same time" that I blogged about a little bit ago, that is," "standing still" and "running hard." As I just mentioned, I have been to the Tanning Salon ten times so far. There is a sameness to the experience. Each time, I am called by name from the little waiting area and walked into the Salon (by one of the very pleasant and professional Staff members) where I take my place on the Tanning Bed. There is a large rubber doughnut of a thing, covered in cloth, into which I put my face, having deftly and modestly pulled my pants down (for medical purposes). And there I lie, face down and pants down, while the Radiation Professionals push me and pull me around a little bit to position me precisely for my very few moments of actual radiation. Then I am left alone in the room and the machines come to life and do their work.

LEach of the ten times, as the magic begins, I recite one of the psalms I long ago memorized. It came to me, thank the Lord, quite uncalled for, my first time in the Salon and I have found it a great help and source of strength each time since. Here it is, with the thoughts of "running hard" and "standing still" I now associate with it. Psalm 16 (ESV) Preserve me, O God, for in you I take refuge. I say to the Lord, “You are my Lord; I have no good apart from you. It is God who I am looking to for preservation. As John Piper has written on not wasting my cancer, I am trusting in God, not in the odds. And not in science, even though I'm lying here becoming more radiant every day. I believe that all the good, and the only good, I will receive from these treatments will be the goodness of God to me. As for the saints in the land, they are the excellent ones, in whom is all my delight. The sorrows of those who run after another god shall multiply; their drink offerings of blood I will not pour out or take their names on my lips. What a difference it makes to trust God rather than trusting anyone or anything less. I am strengthened to have joined the company of "the saints in the land," who have lived and suffered and taken refuge in God and found him faithful and good. I am glad to be free from the "sorrows of those who run after other gods." It is God I am taking refuge in. I am looking to him to preserve me. The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup; you hold my lot. The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance. Whatever comes of all this, one thing is for sure. I have the Lord and he determines all my outcomes. All the uncertainties notwithstanding, the lines always have, and always will, fall to me in pleasant places and my final outcome will be a beautiful inheritance. I bless the Lord who gives me counsel; in the night also my heart instructs me. I have set the Lord always before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken. I'm thankful to God for teaching me how to think about all of this. His words, now written on my heart, are my instructions. The Lord has prepared me for this. With him right here at my right hand, I am unshakeable. The tanning bed shakes a bit in the middle of the process, but I'm not shaking. At all. 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. I really am happy. My whole being is happy. From top to --"Ahem"-- bottom, I have joy. And this physical body of mine is safe and secure, even with cancer cells doing their darndest. Even if my "worst case scenario" DOES come to pass; even if this IS the beginning of the end of my life as I know it; even if I die of this cancer, God will not abandon my soul. It won't be me decomposing in the grave. ("I believe in the resurrection of the body"!) The Lord God, who is my refuge, will keep me running on the path to life, where the joys are full. And when the run is over, whenever that turns out to be, the pleasures of his company will last forever.

Just about then, the machines quit whirring and the Radiation People re-enter the room. They politely look away as I awkwardly get up off the Tanning Bed and pull up my pants. We tell each other "See you tomorrow" and we all get on with our day. And that, in part, is how I am doing. (Thanks for asking.)

TWO THINGS AT THE SAME TIME

"O Lord, make me to know my end and what is the measure of my days; let me know how fleeting I am! Behold, you have made my days a few handbreadths, and my lifetime is as nothing before you.' Psalm 39:4,5 (ESV)

It is generally accepted that there is a certain trickiness involved in doing two things at the same time. Some well-known examples come to mind. Patting your head and rubbing your tummy at the same time. For some people, chewing gum and walking at the same time. For many people, chewing gum and keeping your mouth closed at the same time. More recently added to the list: listening to your spouse and checking your Facebook at the same time.

The particular trickiness I am working on these days is perhaps an example less generally accepted, which if true is a shame. This trickiness can be compared to running hard and standing still at the same time. As for running hard, I have recently been drawn into a fight. A fight for my life. To begin, this fight involves six weeks of radiation treatment and chemotherapy, beginning next Thursday (which is the anniversary of D-Day, by the way.) Plainly, this fight must also involve faith: faith in God; faith that God will strengthen me and help me, and heal me. Things have been made pretty clear to me. Without God's help, this is a fight I am not likely to win. So I am working on being like young David of Israel, with one sling and five stones in hand, running hard towards the giant in the name of the Lord. This is the first thing.

The second thing is standing still, by which I mean quietly accepting the reality of my own mortality and the plain fact that I, like everyone I have ever met, will die someday --- and maybe sooner than later. Having had the privilege of pastoring a church for lots of years, I never would have been able to escape this truth. But I don't think I have ever been tempted to. For just as many years as I have been a pastor, I have been held in the grip of a number of writers, mostly pastors, that I have always referred to as "My Five (or Nine) (or Seven) Dead Men" (I change my mind from time to time about who belongs on the list). "My Five-or-whatever Dead Men" were all individuals and they didn't agree with each other on certain fine points of theology, but they do have a number of things in common, one of the most notable being that they ARE all dead. This, I am sure, has always been helpful to me -- and is helpful to me now. I mean, now that I might be about to die.

So this is the trickiness I am working on. These are the two things I am learning to work on at the same time: to brace myself to run hard toward my enemy, wholeheartedly fighting for my life and trusting God and praying with all my heart for strength and health and healing and a long life, while at the same time, quietly and peacefully accepting the reality that this might in fact be the beginning of the end of my life (as we know it), just as God has always intended it to be. Deb and I are trusting God to see us through the battle that begins on this coming anniversary of D-Day. "We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender…" But at the same time, I am working on humbly accepting the fact that I always was going to die some time, and with it the fact that the time might be some time in the months ahead. "Come now you who say,`Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a city and spend a year there and trade and make a profit' --- yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, "If the Lord wills, we will live and do this and that." James 4:13,14 (ESV)

WHAT'S NEW AND WHAT'S ALWAYS THE SAME

As I was saying, "the tumour almost certainly IS cancer" and "the CT-scan will tell if this IS in fact an Early Detection Story." Although I am still waiting for more tests and the results of those tests -- and I see now that the main thing I am called to do in these early days is to wait -- the results I HAVE just received confirm that I AM a man with cancer and that this is NOT an early detection story. So this is in no way a small adventure and the stakes are just about as high as they could be. Deb (my very lovely wife) and I remain big fans of the peace of God that can guard the hearts and minds of God's people and the joy of the Lord that can be our strength. Very recently, I noticed these two ideas in Psalm 84:11 (ESV). "For the LORD God is a sun and shield; the LORD bestows favour and honour. No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly." The Lord Jesus Christ, the Sun of Righteousness, IS our joy. And his peace DOES protect us as well as any shield.