Age and Opportunity

Many of the people I work with don’t believe I’m as old as I am.  I’ve got them all hoodwinked into thinking I’m 30-something.  The only time I really felt my age was last summer when I went through radiation therapy at a cancer care center about an hour from my home.  While it didn’t make me nauseous or cause any other nasty side effects, it did make me tired.  Every day for 25 days I had to drive for an hour to be radiated for fifteen minutes then drive another hour to get to work.  I would leave home at 7:30 am to arrive in time for my appointment, do the radiation thing, and get back to work by 10:30 or 11:00 am so I could work my eight-hour shift.  By the time I got home I could have cared less about dinner or doing anything productive on the home front, like cleaning up the yard or working on my quilts.

Going through the cancer routine made me realize how little time I had left to do the work assigned to me in God’s Kingdom, and it also made me realize how little I’d accomplished.  I tried to be a good person but did that really equate with being a Christian?  I didn’t think so.  I’d been playing at being a follower of Christ for years and years but had I really done anything to bring others into the Kingdom?  Did I at least plant a seed or two?  Hard to say; only God really knows for sure.  So at the ripe age of 57 I decided I needed to get my act in gear and stop waiting for the church to be what I wanted it to be and get on with the job of doing the things Christ commanded. 

All negativity had to disappear. No more whining and complaining.  Be grateful for every day God gives you and look for ways you can serve others or make their day a little less daunting.  Don’t surround yourself with negative people but don’t forget to send them some positive vibes either.  Learn to be thankful for every struggle that comes your way because it’s only by a refiner’s fire that you will work out your salvation. Be extremely grateful for what you have been given and learn to give what you have back.  Stop wondering why you have to deal with a tumor and start living beyond it. 

There’s been some physical fallout from the radiation and chemo therapy.  I think the arthritis in my knees has gotten worse.  But I’m still walking so that’s a plus, and I started using the recumbent bike again, thinking I’ll work my way up to the elliptical.  Then again, I’ve never been real athletic – I prefer to read books and write volumes no one will read. My eyes require more drops for dry-eye syndrome, but at least I can buy them over the counter and not pay prescription prices for them. I don’t sleep all night long anymore but I get to watch late night TV and read a few more lines in my latest literary purchase.  I even bought a Kindle so I can read any time and anywhere I would like to (as long as I don’t let the charge run out). I still tire more easily but at least I’m above ground.  I’m still standing.  Worst thing was I gained back the weight I lost, or most of it.  Good thing is I saved the bigger size clothes so I don’t have to buy new ones.  I guess there really is a silver lining in every dark cloud.

This summer has been strange anyway, moving from night shift to day shift.  It seems odd to arrive home when it’s still daylight out there.  I can’t complain about not having time to study my Bible anymore because I get home in plenty of time to do that.  I can’t use the excuse of it’s time to go to bed when I get home.  Still I’m not quite sure what to do with myself because I worked night shift for so long that daylight seems kind of scary.  But I get to go to church on Wednesday night, something I haven’t been able to do in at least six years.  Eventually I will get used to day shift and then I’ll wonder how I ever stood night shift all those years.

Losing so many co-workers has been odd too.  The last one hit closer to home than I’d like to think.  We both found out about cancer at the same time, only I’m still here and he’s gone to Glory.  I know I’ve been given another chance to do the work God has for me to do and I hope he’s up there cheering me on, though I suspect he’s more interested in sitting at the feet of Jesus.  It has been odd to see so many people around me fall to cancer and then find myself still standing.  I wonder sometimes how God plans to bring all this around to good.  I remind myself that it’s not my business to know God’s plan, just to believe in it and do as I’m commanded.  So, on I go, hoping whatever I do will make some slight difference for the Kingdom.

Of course, there’s always the little dark cloud of “it will come back” that the enemy likes to send around every once in a while.  Good thing God knows where all my cracks are and fills them up with his Spirit so the enemy doesn’t stand a chance of grabbing hold and bringing my Spirit down.  He can try but the Holy Spirit is always there to intercept. It may not look like he’s there all the time but he is.  Sometimes he has a lot to say, sometimes he has a lot to show me, and sometimes he’s silent.  What’s really amazing is watching him shower me with purple flowers all over the yard that I didn’t plant.  You’d of thought some of them would be a different color, maybe he’d throw in a little yellow or orange or pink or red, but no, they’re all shades of purple.  God is amazing!

What's a Miracle Made Of?

Miracles are not always what we expect.  I’m not sure that if we saw one miracle we wouldn’t want to see 50 more just to prove the first one wasn’t bogus.  Seems that as human beings we always want physical proof that we can see and touch.  Trouble is God is all about believing in what you can’t see and can’t touch.  That’s the essence of faith isn’t it – believing in what you cannot see and trusting that just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it isn’t true.

When Jesus came to earth as a baby he wasn’t exactly the miracle people were looking for. They were expecting a mighty warrior king who would crush their Roman oppressors into nothingness.  Instead he taught love, kindness, caring, being there for people in their distress.  He wore commonly woven garments, not the armor of a warrior.  He told people to give to Caesar what was Caesar’s, he didn’t take up a sword and destroy every Roman tax collector.  Yet today, when we ask for a miracle, what we expect is to have our foe vanquished inside of 30 seconds with a flashy display of lightning and thunder as our foe falls to the ground utterly defeated. 

God’s plan doesn’t always work that way.  Sometimes there’s a round about road to arriving at our miracle. Sometimes we have to be broken before we see the miracle.  Sometimes the miracle arrives without a grand display of lights and sounds.  And sometimes the miracle is right in front of our face but we can’t see it because we choose not to see. We want what we want and if God doesn’t give it to us the way we expect, well, we just can’t see the forest for the trees.  We miss the miracle because we are so busy looking for the big and bold that we can’t fathom the small and delicate.

All around me people are dying – some from cancer, some from other ailments, some from accidents, some from old age.  Yet, I am still here.  Where’s the miracle in someone dying and my being left here?  I don’t know.  I’m not privy to God’s total plan.  Most of the time I’m not even sure what my part in his plan is, or if I will be smart enough to figure it out before it’s too late.  Lately I’ve begun to wonder if I’m more of a hindrance than a help to those around me.  Yet, I trust in God’s plan and hope I’ll know when he needs me to do something for him, even if my part is so small as to be tinier than a nano-second.

  God has certainly blessed me.  I had another colonoscopy done and no cancer was found, not even a hint of it.  He thought he saw cancer but when he did the biopsy, there was none.  I had another CT scan done and it turned out fine.  No worries.  Everything looks good – so good that I’ve been relegated to the “we’ll see you in six months” rotation as far as the Big C is concerned.  I did find out my gall bladder is packed with stones, though I’ve not had any issues because of it, and I have a hiatal hernia, which explains the acid reflux.

Still, I feel badly that while I’m getting all this good news, someone else loses a family member.  Just yesterday another co-worker passed away because of the Big C.  He found out about his cancer about the same time I found out about my tumor.  We’ve both walked through chemotherapy.  I’m not sure if he had radiation therapy or not, he never did say.  But a year later he finds out his has spread and there’s nothing more they can do; I refuse further chemo and all my reports look good.  Right now I can’t say that I see the good in God’s plan but I know for a certainty that he always works things out for the good.

So, what’s a miracle made of?  Things I don’t expect.  Like being allowed another day to work in God’s Kingdom.  Like seeing purple flowers blooming everywhere that I never planted. Like finding the opportunity to bless someone else, or to comfort them in a time of distress. Like being given another chance to do something for God instead of always expecting him to do things for me. 

I really am just like a child sometimes, always demanding things from my Father God without really expecting to have to do anything or give anything.  Like so many others I want a reward for having done nothing.  I behave badly sometimes, running around trying to look important when the truth is that it’s not about me at all.  God said to bring all my cares to him but he didn’t say I should pick them back up and try to make it all work out as if I were him.  Here, God, let me help you make this work out right for me …

Do we also expect the church to do things for us and then get disappointed when things don’t work out the way we think they should?  Probably.  Churches are made up of people, who often disappoint one another.  I know I have failed people, sometimes without knowing I have.  Communication seems to be an issue, even in this day of technological wonders like droids and podcasts.  Like Paul, I want to do right but somehow I end up doing the most wrong thing there could be.

Somehow a few people I know have equated people failing them with God failing them, and they have totally given up on not only the church but on Christianity and God himself.  Why bother walking the straight path when it gets you nothing but suffering?  I didn’t get my big-time miracle so now I’m going to blame God for every bad thing that happens in my life.  That’s the attitude I’ve seen reflected.  Since God’s not going to do anything for me, I’m not doing anything for him!

How quickly we forget.  God did do something for us.  He sent his only Son, perfect and sinless, into a sinful world to suffer and die for our sins.  He sent Jesus to teach us how to live, and how to die.  He sent Jesus to remind us that he loves us, and to give us a way to approach the Father by his sacrifice.  Jesus did not go to the cross because he was obliged to do so; he went because he chose to.  How many of us would choose death on a cross to save those around us – not just our friends and family but everyone, including those we look down on every day. For all that we boast we would, I’m afraid the number who would actually do so would be very small. For the most part, sacrifice is not a concept we humans identify with.

Not that I don’t want to help folks, it’s just that I sometimes question my motives.  Am I really giving all I can give, or just that part I can live without?  Am I really giving what I need to give, or just the thing that isn’t going to cost me very much?  It’s easy to write a small check for a local food network, not so easy to volunteer to go down and work with the people who come into the food bank. 

We glibly say we’ll pray for people and then get so busily entrapped with life that we don’t bother except as a one-liner at midnight. I can just hear myself, “Oh, yeah, God, I said I’d pray for so-and-so, would you mind taking care of that for me? Gee, thanks.” When I agree to be the clerk for the church, do I really mean that, or do I just like the title because it makes me appear important?

Peter kept asking Jesus what he wanted him to do.  Jesus’ answer was, feed my sheep.  Not a particularly glamorous job, feeding sheep. No neon lights, no newspaper bylines, no videos on You Tube.  Maybe the miracle would be that we all start behaving in the manner true Christians are supposed to, doing the things Jesus commanded us to do out of love not obligation, and because we are grateful for what was done for us by a God who loved us enough to give everything he had. 

Tapestry of Grace

Though we like to think we’re the ones running our lives, the truth is that God is the one orchestrating each life.  Sometimes I look around and wonder if God really sees what’s going on only to remind myself that he does, I just don’t see his hand as clearly as I ought.  Jesus was a man of sorrows who knew more about pain and suffering than many of us can begin to imagine. And he did it all for us.  How extraordinary! How revolutionary!

I suppose because we’re sometimes given to thinking we’re the ones controlling our lives, we don’t understand when things go wrong, as they often will.  I know that for many years my first question was, God where are you?  I want a husband and kids too – what’s wrong with me?  Why won’t you give me that?  Seems I was in “gimme” mode a great deal of the time.  Funny I should ask that considering I thought I was the one in control.  The answer is that God never left, I did. 

Why do bad things happen to good people?  Why do some people get cancer and others don’t?  Why do some survive cancer and others don’t?  Why did a mother have to die before she had time to really live?  Why did those parents lose that beautiful child?  Why, why, why? I don’t know.  I do know that God walks through the fire with us and that it is in our suffering when we are closest to the Lord of the Cross. 

Walking through cancer I remind myself daily that God is in the details, even if I can’t feel him standing there with me.  The truth I learned is that tragedy is never the last act – not for those of us who believe in an unfailing, loving Father God.  We may go down, but he’ll always be there to pick us back up.  We may close our eyes in death, but one day we’ll rise with Christ and live with him forever.  Death does not win.  There is a God, and he is the God of the Impossible, so there is always hope.

God weaves a tapestry of grace around our lives in accordance with the plan he has for us.  By grace we come to know him.  By grace we walk to serve him.  By grace we share him with others. By grace we face the daily grind.  By grace we face tragedy and sorrow.  By grace we walk through the wilderness.  By grace we pick up the Sword of Truth and go into battle.  By faith we cling to the promise of his Kingdom.  From the day we are born to the day we travel Home, his grace surrounds us, grounds us, delivers us, and comforts us.

I say this having discovered that yet another co-worker is staring down the barrel of a gun called cancer.  He began with it in his brain and in his lungs; now it has gone to his spine.  The doctors tell him he hasn’t long. That kind of news is devastating.  All you have to hear is the word “cancer” and time stands still – nothing moves, you barely breathe, every sound seems to come from a long way off.  It’s bad enough to deal with the word, let alone what comes after.  Then to be told you haven’t long?  Usually when the doctors tell you that, they also tell you there’s nothing else they can do.

I know God is the God of the Impossible, yet I also know that sometimes the answer is no. It isn’t easy to accept that no might be the only answer you get.  Yet, by the grace of an ever present God, we do.  And we carry on until God calls us Home.  As the song says – the ship may be battered and the sails may be torn but the Anchor holds, in spite of the storm. I must trust that whatever happens it is imbued with God’s tapestry of grace over his life. 

At the same time I look at what I have been given and I wonder, why me?  What could God possibly see in someone like me?  I’m not pretty.  I’m not popular.  I’m not a great singer or a great writer or a great thinker. My hobbies are crocheting, quilting, and reading. I don’t date and I don’t party. My life is so routine I’m downright boring.  I go to work, I go home, I go to church – that’s the circle of my life.  How could God possibly use someone as plain and ordinary as me?  Why have I been left and others taken?  I don’t know.  I have to trust that God does.  I have to believe that whatever happens God has my life in his hands, as well as the lives of others, and that his plan will work things out for the better. 

One thing I have learned is that while God may have grand plans for my life, I sometimes make him work harder than needs to get me to where I should be.  I can be incredibly stubborn.  I can be even more incredibly stupid.  I can almost see God rolling his eyes, shaking his head, and wondering when I’m ever going to get it.  So far I haven’t seen a burning bush, been blinded on the road to Damascus, or wandered in the desert 40 years, but I’ve laid waste to the time I could have spent walking more closely with him.  How could God forgive me for that?  I don’t know but he does. 

Truth is, I’m not so good at pulling in all the strands of my life and weaving them into something credible and purposeful.  I drop stitches here and there, don’t buy enough of the same color yarn, use the wrong stitch, weave it too tightly or too loosely, and generally make a mess of things.  But unlike me God knows where each strand of my life is and what it needs to do.  He knows how to use it, what color it is, and how to weave them all together in a pattern that surprises me.  He takes the broken strands of my impossible life and weaves them into a tapestry of grace. 

Faith By Faith

Today was the ominous find out about the biopsy day after having a colonoscopy done last week.  The surgeon was worried about some scarring but as it turns out it’s only scarring with a little ulcer thrown in.  No cancer, not even a hint of it.  Nothing to start writing my will over.  Hallelujah!  Praise the Lord!  He is good!  Time to enjoy the summer and my place in God’s world.

God’s healing requires faith because you can’t see it coming and you sometimes don’t feel it has arrived.  You just have to know and believe it to be true.  And you have to accept the form it comes in, because it doesn’t always come the way you want it to.  I am amazed every day that I stand above ground, able to work in God’s Kingdom, yet others are taken home as their measure of healing.  He is still the awesome God of the wilderness, the loving Savior who drew children to him like rainwater.

For the longest time I though I had to have the miracle now; after all, he is the God of the impossible.  I wanted signs and wonders.  What I got was a slow path through the wilderness of chemo and radiation treatments, surgery, and more doctor visits in one year than I’ve had in my entire life before then.  Sometimes in order to get our faith to ignite we have to do the slow burn.  Often our leap in faith comes with small steps from one situation to another. Spirituality takes time to grow.

We look to Jesus to perform miracles, wonders, and signs when we should be asking him to forgive us and show us how to walk in faith for his Kingdom.  I used to think that my needs were too small for God to worry about, my situation too insignificant for him to care about.  Now I know the truth – he cares about every aspect of my life – he just sometimes doesn’t answer my prayers and supplications the way I expect him to.  It isn’t that God isn’t listening, it’s just that sometimes the answer is no.

Living a spirit-filled life challenges us to do the impossible for God, even when we know we’re the weakest link in the chain.  It gives us the impetus to go forward and walk the path set before us, even when we don’t necessarily feel or see God on the path.  He’s still there.  He hasn’t left.  He’s giving us room to meet him and walk with him, to learn more about his ways, and to do more for him than we ever thought possible. Even when the gauntlet includes cancer, going through the fire is worth it, because in the fire we are purified.  At no time in my life have I been closer to the Savior than during the storm the word “cancer” causes.

Of course, there are times when I will fail, fall down, get broken, sidelined, off track.  But God is always there to rescue me and bring me back to the path.  Hopefully, I’m a little wiser for the wear and tear.  Hopefully, I’ve learned the lesson God had to teach me.  Hopefully, I won’t let a failure become the litany of my life.  Because there is a God, there is always hope.

I’ve met a lot of folks who want positive proof that God exists.  My question is, how much proof do you need?  Does God have to perform miracles every day for you to see him?  Not me.  I walked out on my deck the other day and discovered an absolutely beautiful, deep purple clematis growing around the railings.  How it got there is God’s work.  I didn’t plant it. Neither did my mother or anyone else in our family.  I suppose you could claim the critters thought it was a nut and planted the bulb for me.  But I believe God placed it there just for me.  It’s not a miracle, just a pretty flower blooming on my front deck.  It means the world to me because God is in the growing of it.

After finding the clematis I got to thinking about a couple of other strange occurrences.  Last year, just as I was finding out about the tumor, my mother and I happened to see something odd in the side yard.  When we got out there, we discovered an entire carpet of purple crocuses decorating the side yard.  You couldn’t see the grass or leaves for the purple.  I had some flower beds near there, but I hadn’t planted crocuses in them. The ones I did plant were in back of the house and were white and yellow. So how did all those purple crocuses get there?  It would have taken an army of squirrels to plant that many bulbs thinking they were nuts for winter storage.  Who else but God could create a carpet as beautiful as that?  Like I said, how much proof do you need?

Then this spring, just as I was setting up appointments to monitor the tumor area with CT scans and a colonoscopy, I happened to notice the lilac bush by the side of the house.  I’d planted it years ago and it had never ever bloomed.  This year it did, in a glorious shade of purple.  And then there’s the iris out by the shed that has always come up but never bloomed.  It bloomed this year – in a deep shade of purple.  I think God is trying to tell me something.  I think I’d better pay attention.