I just got the phone call I had been expecting. It was the doctor’s office calling about the tumor they had removed two days earlier from my right thigh. After identifying herself, the voice said, “it is cancer.”
I wasn’t surprised. I had just read the test results that had been posted to my portal page and I already knew that it was a high grade sarcoma. More tests were needed to see if it had spread to other areas in my body, so those new scans were getting set up.
Just a little over a week earlier, the Dr. said that if the tumor was benign, then I go on about my life. If however it was cancer, then there would probably be some radiation therapy in my near future. I think the doctor undersold the whole thing. (See also my article, Cancer and the Resurrection.)
Being a Christian, I have thought about my eventual death (or rapture!) many times. Just a handful of years earlier I had solidified my 30 year plan, thinking I would live to be perhaps 90, based on my immediate family history. I didn’t see a tumor on the horizon (or on my thigh!)
Job’s Adversity
In the book of Job, after Job endures some very intense trials, he comments to his wife, “Should I indeed accept good from God and not accept adversity?”1 I quoted this verse to someone recently and they said something like, “that’s easy to say until you get into the middle of it.”
I don’t want to talk disparagingly of folks who battle faith in times like this, many of them have been in the middle and know the struggles involved better than me. My hope is that I stay steadfast when I am in the midst of it.
In an effort to help both me and my wife keep our heads straight, I said to her, “Don’t fret.” I had said this to her in the past, not because she went around fretting, but because it is a common human reaction to adversity. I knew from my own experience that in the face of adversity I could easily fret, and so could she.
Fretting, in this context, is “to become vexed or worried.”2 The dictionary says that the word applies to our emotional experiences so that something that “eats away at someone” is “fretting the heart or mind.” In other words, we fret when something eats away at us.
If we were in control, if life centered around us, if we could tweak things a bit (or sometimes a lot!), fretting would sort of make sense. We are concerned that we get it right and have a lot invested in the outcome.
However, we are not in control, but we know the One who is in control. He made us, and He has the right to do as He pleases. Once I am able to see things this way, I can rest in Him, and know that the best outcome will occur. In light of this, fretting no longer makes sense. I don’t need to worry.
This perspective is really simple, because it is based on faith. It is simple but not always easy. Jesus said that, “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”3 In this application, His phrase would mean I will have to fight my flesh and keep reminding myself of the truth. My flesh is weak that way.
Reality of Brokenness
I’m not suggesting that we ignore reality, our difficulties, our own brokenness, or the brokenness of the world. God does not promise physical healing in this life. I believe in miracles, and certainly God could heal me. But many times He allows events to proceed following the normal course of the world. Since the world is broken, we get broken results.
Instead of concentrating on our difficulties, we should focus on our God and turn to Him in our time of need. We can do this because He loves us and is faithful. The Bible is full of passages about this, here are just a few:
- Psalm 145:8-9 The LORD is gracious and merciful; Slow to anger and great in lovingkindness. The LORD is good to all, And His mercies are over all His works.
- Lamentations 3:22-23 The LORD’S lovingkindnesses indeed never cease, For His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; Great is Your faithfulness.
- Ephesians 2:4-5 But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved).
- James 5:10-11 As an example, brethren, of suffering and patience, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. Behold, we count those blessed who endured. You have heard of the endurance of Job and have seen the outcome of the Lord’s dealings, that the Lord is full of compassion and is merciful.
And the ultimate proof of God’s mercy toward us, the Father sent His Son, Jesus, as a sacrifice for us.
Conclusion
Cancer wreaks havoc in the lives of those diagnosed with it and those around them. But we have a God who sympathizes with our weaknesses and as He says in Hebrews 4:16,
“Therefore let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”
With His mercy, we can face the greatest enemy which He defeated, death!
Job was right. We should also accept adversity from God.
Appendix
I write about continuing to trust God in the post, How to be a Spiritual Giant.
1 Job 2:10. Job was responding to his wife who had just said to him, “Curse God and die!”
2 https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fret 3/23/24
3 Matthew 26:41