Getting ready to die is hard work. I
realize it probably should not be. As Christians, we are to live each
day sub specie aeternitatis,
that is, under the aspect or in the light of eternity. We are to be
aware that our days are numbered, that they may not accrue to even
the usually allotted span of three score and ten. I am presently just
pushing three score. But throughout my ministry I have buried enough
people, among them many people much younger than myself, and
accompanied many as they lay dying, to awaken me to the reality of
death and its unexpectedness. As the character in the old medieval
morality play is made to say, "O Death, thou comest when I least
expected thee"! Likewise, Bishop Thomas Ken's stately evening
hymn teaches us frequently to sing,
Teach me to live
that I may dread the grave as little as my bed.
Teach me to die
that so I may rise glorious at the awful day.
I know that my
Redeemer lives. I know that I am justified by His righteousness, and
not at all by my own. I know that this faith which lives in my heart
is a gift from Him. I know that I need Him every hour. I know that He
loved me with an everlasting love, from before the foundation of the
world. I know that he who dies believing dies safely in His love. I
know that I must bear my own Cross and follow Him. But when they tell
you that you have cancer, in my case a very large B-Cell type tumour,
the corrupt fruit of a disease called Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma, it seems
there are some unavoidable reactions.
This is so because
information of this type, "you have cancer", tends to carry
with it a fairly powerful emotional charge. Words and ideas and
thoughts carry with them an emotional charge, just as a pair of socks
can become electrically charged when you walk across a dry carpet in
winter. And the emotions attendant upon learning that you are very
sick are both involuntary and relentless. They insist that you attend
to them. And so you must. This takes time and is laborious, just what
you do NOT need when you are sick, of course, but it must be done,
and, if we are wise, it will get done. How complicated our emotions
are need hardly be said. They carry us here and there, up and down,
in and out. We cannot escape them. They demand our attention.
Perhaps we feel
cheated, thinking that we are being robbed of precious years of life,
while others, surely less worthy than ourselves, go on living
disease-free, utterly useless, wastrel lives! Perhaps we dread saying
goodbye, if only for a while, to those who we feel still need us in
some way, those who are perhaps vulnerable and in need of our
protection and care. Perhaps we just feel afraid, and unwilling to
think about what our last hours may be like, what kind of pain we may
have to endure. Perhaps we feel just a strong sense of uselessness,
that we have not lived our lives as we should have.
And, of course, we
have not. As Christians, we know about Original Sin and we know that
even a life repeatedly dedicated to God's service is far from being
what it should. We are not what we ought to be. We are not what we
shall be. And, yes, thanks be to God, we are not what we used to be.
We may, however, find ourselves thinking "if only", and
re-running those deeply imbedded video clips of our most stupid,
ridiculous, sinful moments. This may not be entirely without its
uses. It does not hurt us to remember that we are sinful, even when
we are regenerate. But there is something to which we must constantly
return, especially when we are sick and faced with a death which may
come sooner rather than later.
And it
is this : He hath made every thing beautiful in his time
(Ecclesiastes 3 11). It is a beautiful thing to have cancer. And this
is so because there is a purpose for everything. Nothing happens
outside, or apart from, God's wise counsel and foreknowledge. He
makes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust. He overrules all
His creatures and all their actions. As Dr. Gill wisely notes ...
God has made
everything; as all things in creation are made by him, for his
pleasure and glory, and all well and wisely, there is a beauty in
them all: so all things in providence; he upholds all things; he
governs and orders all things according to the counsel of his will;
some things are done immediately by him, others by instruments, and
some are only permitted by him; some he does himself, some he wills
to be done by others, and some he suffers to be done; but in all
there is a beauty and harmony ...
In other words, it
is a beautiful thing to be told that you have cancer. It is not an
accident. You are not a victim of blind chance or fate. It is, in a
very real sense, God's visitation. It is a gift. This is what it
means to understand God's "providence". We mean that He
overrules all things, that His wise, loving, holy, good, guiding hand
is finally behind everything which happens to us and, if we are wise,
we shall consciously receive it ALL AS FROM HIS HAND. He is never
unjust, never evil, never sinful. But even what is evil or sinful, He
overrules it for His own purposes and those purposes are always
beautiful. He hath made everything beautiful in His time.
And, as John Calvin reminds us, therein lies true felicity:
give heed and you
will at once perceive that ignorance of providence is the greatest of
all miseries, and the knowledge of it the highest happiness.
(Institutes - 1 17 11)
In other words, for
the Christian, it may not be pleasant to be told you have cancer and
that you may die sooner rather than later. The emotional charge that
comes along with those words is real and pressing. But behind all
this lies reality. And what is real is that God is God, that this is
His world, and that I am, by His grace, His son. Can anything happen
to me that is not designed to increase my faith in Him? Can anything
happen to me that is not for my good? Can anything happen to me that
can really hurt me? The answer to each of these is an emphatic "no".
Also, is anything impossible with God? Is He no longer the sovereign
ruler of His universe? Is it beyond His power to heal either directly
or by means or even against means? We give the same answer.
Of course, I am
heartily sick of being sick. The treatment which is, thanks be to
God, making me gradually, steadily better, also has the effect of
making me feel right poorly, and as day follows day, and month
follows month, the mind and body grow weary. I certainly did not plan
to be sick this long! But there is another level, the level where we
really live, the level of the soul or spirit. There is no weariness
there, only joy, joy in knowing that real happiness is a by-product.
It is one of those things which, if we pursue it, will always remains
just out of our reach, but which will flow to us freely and easily
when we pursue what we ought. For it remains forever true, that if we
seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, then all that is
needful will be added unto us as well. He hath made all things
beautiful in His time. God grant that we may embrace as
beautiful all that he sends and to Him be all the glory.
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