GUEST ESSAY: Faith
Irrespective of your circumstances, you are in the caring hands of a loving God!
Dear Friends,
This is a bittersweet Christmas for me. As I write you, my wife is packing a little suitcase for “Dee,” our special Down’s daughter, in preparation for her return on Christmas day to San Diego after visiting with us for three months. On the plane, she’ll be surrounded by other vacationing, family members who love her and will care for her on the journey back to family in Poway.
I am not alone in “mixed” feelings over the Christmas season. For many, it is a difficult time of year. There are families who are estranged, marriages that are fractured, and the sad “remembrance of things past,” which the holidays seem to exacerbate.
Grit and determination get most people through the capriciousness of life, but, ultimately, those with faith in Christ find a quiet confidence that God loves them and will never leave nor forsake them, regardless of external circumstances. That is, in great measure, the incarnational Christmas story—Immanuel—God is with us!
As a Christmas blessing, I’m hoping you’ll read a testimony of my niece’s son (does that make me his great-uncle?). He is twenty three, a recent graduate of Indiana Wesleyan University, and newly married to the lovely Rachael Murphy. Just a few days before going on a delayed honeymoon to St. Croix, he went into the hospital for tests because of a severe headache, was diagnosed with a brain tumor, and had successful surgery a few days later. Thank God they caught it then and he was in the hands of some of the finest diagnosticians and surgeons in Indiana. But, the prognosis is challenging, and, as you can imagine, at twenty three and newly married, it is an enormous shock to them and the entire family.
As I read Mark’s testimonial essay a few days ago that Debby, my wife, showed me, I was deeply touched and knew I wanted to share it with the subscribers to The Church’s One Foundation. They are the words of a young believer who, irrespective of circumstances, knows he is in the caring hands of a loving God. May it be the blessing to you that it was for me. And join me, when prompted by the Spirit, in praying for this precious young man and his wife. And may we like him, be “…convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-39 NIV). May such faith be yours this blessed Christmas season and throughout the coming year. Love did come down at Christmas, and know that…
You Are Loved!
D. Paul
FAITH
Every Thanksgiving, my mom makes all of us go around the table and say what we are thankful for. I usually don’t put much thought into it, but I was thinking about things I was thankful for weeks before Thanksgiving this year. This will probably seem odd, but since being diagnosed with cancer I have become acutely aware of what I am thankful for each day. Maybe it is because this diagnosis is so negative that I cling to the positive moments in my life. I am thankful that in the midst of all I have endured, I am fully functional. I can move all of my limbs. I don’t have any balance issues. My memory is clear. I no longer take these things for granted because I know that the tumor or surgery could have taken these things from me. I am thankful for how well my body has been tolerating treatment so far. I am thankful for a loving wife and family that have been supportive and strong for me and with me. But perhaps most of all, I am thankful that God has revealed to me how powerful the body of Christ is. I am thankful that I have never been alone in this battle.
I wanted to say thank you to all who have been constantly praying for me during this cancer journey. Rachel and I couldn’t have done this without the prayer and other means of support that so many have provided. I have never been so personally touched by the Church before. I don’t feel like I have done much to deserve it, but people in many different states, in central America, and even in Asia have been praying for me. Rachel and I just want to express our deepest gratitude for all that has been done for us. It was so nice to know each day that I was alone in the radiation room, the Holy Spirit and so many others were with me in the form of prayer.
I know that my mom and Rachel have shared updates along the way, but I thought I would also share a personal update on how I am doing. As all of you know, Rachel and I got married this summer. We never expected such a difficult challenge to arrive 6 weeks after we were married. We had waited nearly six years for marriage, and we were both so excited to be together. I knew that marriage has its own set of challenges and that life has difficult seasons, but I envisioned the newlywed time as one full of happiness and joy. I certainly didn’t foresee us holding each other tightly as we cried before falling to sleep. I didn’t envision having discussions about how long one of us was expected to live. I never imagined one of the first routines we would develop while married was going to get brain radiation every day. This has been the most challenging season of my life, and it doesn’t seem fair. This was supposed to happen after 50+ years of marriage, not 6 weeks.
As I have wrestled with some of these thoughts and challenges, I quickly found myself at a crossroad: I can sulk and be angry at God (there have certainly been moments of this) or I can choose to have hope in a God of miracles. I have a new appreciation for how precious life is. I don’t want to waste the rest of my life. I want to make sure I’m using my life to bring glory to my King and build treasures for my next life.
I will never know why this has happened to me. But in my struggles to make sense of all this, God has reminded me of a few things I know to be true. I live in a broken world and that means that disease exists. This is not by God’s design, and this is not the life He wants for me. John 10:10 tells us that the enemy comes to steal, kill, and destroy. Christ came to give us a rich and satisfying life. Coinciding with this, God has really been pressing on my heart the last few weeks that He hasn’t changed. My life situation is very different than it was 4 months ago, but God hasn’t changed at all. He is the same God I have devoted my life to since I was young. He is the same God that loved me enough to give up His Son to die for me. So, if I believed all these things and worshipped Him because of them before I was diagnosed with cancer, why shouldn’t I now?
I have found peace and hope in knowing that He is the same God that orchestrated every miracle in the Bible. I know with this diagnosis I am going to need a miracle to have the life I want to have. He created all things. He is in control of the fiercest storm. He has split bodies of water. He has raised the dead to life. The list goes on and on. If He has done all these things, can He not heal my body of mutated, microscopic cells? I’m living by faith in a God of miracles like I never have before. In this advent season, I find myself more stirred than ever to think about an immaculate conception. Another miracle that I am clinging on to as evidence that God can do the impossible. God has also been telling me that with each day that passes and new challenges to face, I will never be alone. I am not going anywhere that He doesn’t already know and that He won’t be with me for. Where He leads, I will follow even if that means going through the fiercest storms to get there.
I want to close with a request. I am so thankful for your prayers, but I am asking you to keep praying for healing and for one other thing. As for the healing, I would ask that you pray that God would take the chemotherapy I am taking and the radiation I have been through and multiply their effects. One Bible story that has meant a lot to me during this season is the feeding of the five thousand. God used five loaves of bread and two fish to feed that many people. Some days, all I feel like I can do is to give God my fishes and loaves – chemo and radiation. My prayer, even on days when my faith is lacking, is that God would multiply those treatments into a miracle. I know that He is in control, and He needs much less than that to show me He can make the most of my fishes and loaves.
Philippians 1:6 promises that God begins a good work in each of His children and that He will see that work through to its end. I would ask each of you to prayer that God use this difficult situation to bring about some good. The work in my life includes this cancer story now and be praying that He will see that work through. I believe that even though He doesn’t cause hard things to happen, He can use them to change lives. Pray that He may use my story to somehow plant seeds that grow into a harvest for His kingdom.
Mark Ziegler
Amen, my brothers and sisters in Christ, amen!
D. Paul
The Church’s One Foundation Is Jesus Christ Her Lord!