Three years ago, following a routine mammogram, the radiologist sent a nurse to get me from the waiting room to join them in the room where Linda was waiting. “Suspicious spots,” he said. “Need to follow up,” he said. “Cancer?” I asked. He wouldn’t say. But the surgeon did.
So there was surgery and radiation and a decision about chemotherapy and all the questions that go with the diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer. Then we were done.
Two years ago, Christmas day, Linda fell in the basement and smashed her head against the concrete floor. Her fall resulted in a severe concussion, three brain bleeds, a stint in the neurological ICU at Essentia-St. Mary’s, a week in physical rehab at Polinsky, and positional vertigo that remains to this day. She sleeps in a chair next to the bed because she can’t lie flat without the world spinning miserably out of control.
Just before Christmas this last year (2015), following a routine mammogram, the radiologist sent a nurse to get me from the waiting room to join them in the room where Linda was waiting. “Suspicious spots,” he said. “Need to follow up,” he said. “Cancer?” I asked. “Need to follow up,” he said again. I didn’t need to ask again.
So there was surgery, again, and again. Then there was the decision about chemotherapy and this week a decision about radiation. And we’re not done…yet.
Someone used the word “relentless.” Many of you reading these words know how relentless the effects of living in an imperfect world can be, where trouble, and sorrow, and difficulty can seem to wash like unwanted waves over the soul eroding joy and hope and stamina. You’ve been here. You are here. You know whereof I speak.
“How do you keep going?” another someone asked. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I will tell you, for myself, faith is the key to endurance, and not only to endurance but to actually thriving in difficult circumstances.
And not just some vague faith in the evenness of the universe. Not a faith in doctors or medicine. Not even faith in some benevolent power that randomly asserts itself on behalf of unsuspecting beneficiaries. For me, real strength comes from faith in a very personal, God, Jesus Christ, whom I know by faith to be good, wise, loving, and present.
Faith is the confidence we have that something inaccessible to the five physical senses is nonetheless true. Faith reaches past what is seen to take a hold of what is unseen. I do not see God with my eyes, but I know with certainty that He exists and that He loves and that He acts for my good even in the most unpleasant, hope-withering circumstances.
How do I know this? What fuels my faith in a God I cannot see, or touch with my hands, or hear with my ears, smell with my nose, or taste with my tongue? First of all, He tells me in His word that He is good and that He is love. I see the evidence of these things both in what He has created and in the events and outcomes of my own life.
Second, He shows me in the life and death and resurrection of His Son, Jesus Christ, God come in human flesh: fully God, fully man. God came to share life with us, in all its joys and all its woes. He came specifically to show us Himself, how He is, how He loves. And He demonstrated His love most clearly when He died on the cross, giving His life on our behalf. “No greater love has any man than this, that he lay down his life for his friend.”
And I wasn’t even his friend. I was a sinner, an enemy of God, indifferent to His claim upon my life as my Creator, and actively disinterested in His plan to give me the fullest life I could ever have. I was in that condition when He died for me, taking upon Himself the justice my sin deserved.
Now, you have to know that is love. And because I know I am so loved, because I know my wife is so loved by God that He died for us, not in theory but in fact, that I cannot help but believe every promise of goodness and hope and strength is equally reliable. What point would it be to die for me and then abandon me just because life takes an unpleasant, less than desirable turn?
I trust Him implicitly, completely, without reservation. God’s love for me in Christ fuels my faith in Him and faith fuels our endurance. No matter how life turns out, whether it is long or short, peaceful or full of turmoil, God loves. In times of trouble, in days of peace, God loves.
And that’s Good News.
Pastor Dale McIntire has served as pastor of the Cornerstone Community Church in Grand Marais since April of 1995.
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