I lost my mother to this life-threatening disease not 5 months ago.
She bore the cancer tag for 15 years. Praise God she left it in the grave and does not bear it to-day.
A friend gave her this poem which encouraged her in her battle.
Cancer is so limited
It cannot cripple love
It cannot shatter hope
It cannot erode faith
It cannot eat away peace
It cannot destroy confidence
It cannot kill friendship
It cannot shut out memories
It cannot silence courage
It cannot invade the soul
It cannot reduce eternal life
It cannot quench the spirit
It cannot lesson the power of the resurrection.
According to the national statistics on-line, 1 in 3 of us will be diagnosed with cancer and 1 in 4 of us will die from it.
Why is it then we are shocked when we hear of more and more diagnosis among our friends and relatives? I believe part of our fear is that we don’t know how to cope as Christians with this diagnosis.
If you are a cancer sufferer or have just been diagnosed with cancer, as a Christian how should you respond?I believe part of the answer is here. John Piper has compiled a list to encourage cancer sufferers to glorify God in their illness.
Perhaps in the light of statistics we should all be reading this advice to be prepared for hearing the diagnosis no-one yearns for, but that which God alone gives.
(I would appreciate continued prayer for my dear Aunt and my husbands dear sister).
Mummymac.
May 25, 2007 at 11:01 am
I was so glad and challenged when I read this excellent article of John Piper’s.
Even though we may not have the illness (yet) we should prepare in whatever way we can to meet our King.
In the words of Octavius Winslow from his book ‘Help Heavenward’
But from the heaven to which we ( the Redeemed)
are going, all sorrow and sighing will forever have passed. The
shadows will have dissolved, sin will be effaced, sighing will cease,
sorrow will be turned into “fulness of joy,” and heaven will be resplendent
with undimmed and unfading glory, and resound with a
new and endless song. Is not this heaven worth living for, worth
suffering for, worth laborings for—no, if need be, worth a thousand
martyrdoms?
“A captive here, and far from home,
For Zion’s sacred courts I sigh:
There the ransomed nations come,
And see the Savior ‘eye to eye.’
“While here, I walk on hostile ground;
The few that I can call my friends
Are, like myself, with fetters bound,
And weariness my path attends.
“But we shall soon behold the day
When Zion’s children shall return;
Our sorrows then shall flee away,
And we shall never, never mourn.
“The hope that such a day will come
Makes e’en the captive’s portion sweet;
Though now we’re distant far from home
In Zion soon we all shall meet.”
N
May 25, 2007 at 3:15 pm
Thanks for the reminder N.
I particularly like this quote “is not this heaven worth living for, worth
suffering for, worth laboring for—no, if need be, worth a thousand
martyrdoms”?
Another good book covering the same topic is by Edward A Hartman called
“Homeward Bound” - thoroughly recommended.
May 26, 2007 at 3:19 am
Sorry about your mother. The cancer statistics are very sobering.
March 15, 2008 at 4:29 pm
[...] Remember, as I said before according to the National Statistics on-line 1 in 4 of us will be diagnosed with cancer and 1 in 3 of us will die from it. [...]