Thoughts about how cancer sucks, Jesus teaches and the fact that everybody is going to die.

It was a bad night last night. I’m on this new medication for my ear that actually turns my stomach quite a bit. Well, last night it woke me up. The last time I was woken up by stomach pains I found out a few weeks later that I had cancer. It’s no secret that cancer, even after it’s gone from your body, leaves it’s dirty little finger prints all over you, and last night it was obvious in my case. Almost immediately after being woken up, my nerves had it. I started the shakes and the cold sweats, and in my exhausted and mentally fatigued state of mind lost the ability to reason back my grasp on realty and remember that there was a 99% chance this pain was due to the new medication. A couple hours later I feel back asleep.

Arriving at work this morning, understandable feeling wiped and anxious, I sat down and clicked on my little “Bible Verse of the Day” Google gadget and I was met with 2 Corinthians 4:16 which says:

“So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.”

How relevant. For some reason I thought of the story in Mark chapter 2 where a paralyzed man’s four friends carry him on his cot to the house were Jesus was, and upon seeing the crowd that had gathered and worried they might not get through, proceeded to the roof, cut a hole into it and lower down their sick friend so Jesus could heal him. Verse five says:

When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Child, your sins are forgiven.”

After the night I had last night, and as someone who prays regularly for healing, I can almost hear the thoughts of the paralysis’s friends. “Uh… Jesus, that’s great and all… but we didn’t bring him here for forgiveness, we brought him for healing.” (I can almost hear the thoughts of the guy who owned the house also. “What the heck…who did this to my roof?!” But that’s another topic for another day.)

Jesus did heal the man, but not before making a point or two. The point I took from it this morning was that the spiritual matters have to come first. What good is it to be healed, or spared, or have whatever your physical need is be met if you aren’t forgiven? An interesting aspect to this story is an obvious one that I think gets over looked. The man who was healed still died anyway. Even when Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead… he still died again later on. On a long enough time line, the survival rate for everybody drops to zero… no one here is getting out alive.

I guess these could be seen as morbid thoughts, but this morning this was a real and present source of comfort for me. Almost like God met me right where I was and knew what I needed to hear to put things back into perspective, and get on with my day.

On a different note, the coffee at work today tasted like liquid Chicken McNuggets. That can’t be good.