An open letter to a friend in need of prayer.

Dear L,
I always read the church’s prayer bulletin with concern, and Anita and I offer intercessory prayers for those needs listed in our fellowship.  We became especially focused on the prayer request for YOU, indicating you had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.  From my time working for the Cancer Information Society, I understand this cancer is insidious and usually not diagnosed until it has spread.

We know that Jesus can heal; nothing is impossible for The God Who Is.  There are many examples and verses of Scripture that affirm that “by His stripes we are healed.” (Isaiah 53:5 KJV)  I am a walking miracle, having gone through six strokes, the last of which was 99% blockage of the basal stem artery which supplies 99% of the blood to the brain!  Yet, He used the doctors to perform His miraculous healing and here I type and work and behave most of the time as if I am “normal” (which prompts my brother to ask, “Who told you you were normal!” 😄).

So this will be our prayer for you, that you will experience a divine touch such as the woman with a discharge of blood experienced when she simply touched the fringe of Jesus’ garment in Luke 8.  Beyond the doctors’ skills and knowledge, our knowledge of The Holy infuses our prayers with faith that He will bring Himself glory in healing you.  Selfishly, we would like to enjoy more Lunch Bunches with you and share at Gatherings or in meals at our home or yours.  Your appearance has always been to be in good health except for some small complaints of back pain, which I suspect led to this diagnosis, so we will trust Jesus that this illness is for His glory to be revealed in your healing. (See John 9:1-3.)

Of course, any healing this side of Heaven in only temporary.  Even Lazarus, raised from the dead after three days, died again at some time, and is enjoying the Presence of the LORD with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, Ester, Ruth and so many others, until we join in that celebration of the Marriage Supper of the Lamb.

And of course, our lives are to be lived and ended for His glory alone. (Romans 14:8)

The joy for those of us who follow Jesus is the removal of human’s greatest fear, the fear of death.  “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?”   And knowing you as our sister, that you have placed your faith in Jesus, assures us that as C.S. Lewis said with a big grin to Sheldon Vanauken in A Severe Mercy, “Christians NEVER say goodbye!”  This was before Sheldon’s wife died at the age of 40.  But Lewis knew that even when apparent death to this world separates us for a season, we are never truly terminal!  We will live forever with our Lord and with each other and all those who have put their trust in Jesus. 

In  A Severe Mercy, Sheldon Vanauken reveals a letter from C.S. Lewis that gave his book its title. “One way or another [the love between you and your wife] had to die… There are various ways in which it could have died though both parties went on living.  You have been treated with a severe mercy.”  So we see that God is merciful even when we sometimes do not understand His mercy at first.  But this is our faith, that whatever comes to us in this life is for His glory and how we can reveal Him, His holiness and His love to others.

So our prayer for you at this time will be that the severe mercy of your illness will reveal something of God’s glory, holiness and love.  First, by your healing so that you can have some more time here to bless and share life with us and enjoy preparing for our final departure, whether that comes through Christ’s return or by our “crossing the Jordan into His Promised Land.”

When my Dad died from complications from Parkinson’s at 73 years old, the Holy Spirit gave me a song of which this is the chorus, from my Dad’s point of veiw.  Going by Psalm 90:10, he felt that anything past 70 was a “year of grace” from our Lord. (I’m working out some arrangements to put the song on YouTube, but it is slow finding people to do it.)

“These are the Years of Grace that the Lord has given to me,
And though I long to see His face, there may be reasons that I cannot see
To keep me here in this time and place to learn to serve Him more faithfully.
Though outside we appear to be dying, inside the light of Jesus is shining.
He put such treasures in this earthen vase in these years of grace.”

So be blessed in His Presence as you shine the light of His holiness and love to all the folks with whom you interact while in the hospital.  And we will see you again, soon.  We will NEVER say goodbye. 😉
❤️&🙏, c.a. and anita

The Chicken or the Egg – Forgiveness or Forgiving

Which came first: the chicken or the egg?  This is one of those questions that gives most evolutionists fits, but the intelligent ones like Richard Dawkins or Stephen Hawking, who really analyze the possibilities, come up with plausible solutions, though statistically phenomenal; along the lines of ten raised to the number of atoms in the universe.

For the creationist, this is not a problem.  After “The Big Bang” of Genesis 1:1-2, God went on a working binge and day by day created everything, noting that on the fifth day He made the birds.  Now whether He created chickens right then is anyone’s guess, but He created each creature “according to its kind.”  He may have made a generic bird that evolved into Rhode Island Reds, Cornish Game Hens and Butterball Turkeys, but it started with a bird who could lay eggs.

Forgiveness from The God Who Is There and forgiving those who offend us is not so clear.  Which comes first?  Jesus said very explicitly that “if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” (Matthew 6:14-15)

Then He goes around willy-nilly forgiving people without even asking them if they have forgiven those who offended them.  See Mark 2:1-5 and Luke 5:16-20, one of Jesus’ earlier miracles where He simply carte blanche forgives a paralyzed man prior to healing him.  In Luke 7:47-48 He forgives a prostitute; again, no questions about her forgiving of those who have abused her.  The preachers in Acts never once asked for psychological histories of their hearers; they simply told them to repent of their sins and they would be forgiven.  James, the half-brother of our Lord, later wrote instructions that connected physical healing to forgiveness of sins without any caveats.

People Like Trees

So which comes first, the forgiveness of God or the forgiving others from our hearts?  To consider this we can look at another healing of Jesus in Mark 8:22-26.  Here Jesus spit on the man’s eyes (not very hygienic, but hey, He is the son of God!), laid His hands on him and asked, “Do you see anything?”  Really?  Did Jesus not know if He had healed the guy!?  So the guy said he could “see people, but they look like trees walking.”  Again, Really?  Did Jesus goof??!!  Well, He fixed it next, because He laid His hands on his eyes again, giving him a second touch, and the guy could see everything clearly.

You see, Jesus did not (nor does He now) “goof!”  So consider the reason for this phased in healing.  After the first touch, could the man see?  Well, sorta.  Well, not really, not functionally.  Yet he was no longer blind.  I suspect Jesus saw the future analysts of spiritual matters trying to fill in the details in their theologies and He wanted to say, “Not everything is so cut and dried as your theology; sometimes our relationship is a work in progress.”  Then He completed the work with a second touch!

In the same way, our question of which comes first, Forgiveness From God or Forgiving Others, is a work in progress, not so simple as whether God created chickens or eggs first.  Just as chickens and eggs are now inextricably intertwined, forgiveness from The God Who Is There is inextricably intertwined with forgiving those who have offended us.  But the working out of this is that sometimes we “see people, but they look like trees walking.”

When you experience the forgiveness of God it must work its way into your heart to such a depth that you cannot hold a grudge.  Or if you have an offender in need of forgiveness, and you forgive him/her, you will find yourself experiencing a level of forgiveness from God that you have not known before.  Whichever comes first, look for that “second touch” from Jesus!  Because in the end, He will look at our hearts, and if we have not forgiven those who have offended us, it will show that we have never fully understood (nor accepted) His forgiveness.  See Matthew 18:21-35 for a more complete picture of this.

The details of this works its way into our lives like in Corrie ten Boom’s meeting (reported in Tramp for the Lord).  After talking about God’s grace and forgiveness in one of her church presentations, she saw a smiling man at the back of the small auditorium coming forward and her heart went into her stomach.  She recognized him as one of the Nazi guards at the POW camp where she had been unjustly imprisoned.  Here was a man who had stood over the women of the camp as they were paraded nude into showers (which later were turned into gas chambers).  “The man who was making his way forward had been a guard — one of the most cruel guards. Now he was in front of me, hand thrust out. I was face to face with one of my captors and my blood seemed to freeze. ‘Fraulein, will you forgive me?’”  She prayed, Oh, God, I cannot forgive this man; You must forgive him through me.  And as she extended her hand she felt a wave of the Holy Spirit pass through her and the man was forgiven, by both God and Corrie!

So which comes first?  The Forgiveness of God or Forgiving Others.  They are inextricably intertwined, like the chicken and the egg.  God’s marvelous creation, you and I, are forgiven and forgiving, even when we “see people, but they look like trees.”  Keep looking and wait for His second touch.