I have a long-time friend who is dying of cancer. He was first diagnosed in August with a brain tumor -- one of the most aggressive and deadly types there are -- and has now lost his sight and isn't responding too much to those around him. It has been such a long, hard road for his wife and their young daughter, as well as his parents, siblings and close friends.
I, along with probably everyone throughout history, have to ask why.
Why must people suffer so? Why can't death for God's children always happen quickly, painlessly, gracefully, and with dignity?
I don't really have any wise words in answer to this. Even David, in his psalms would wonder about this.
But here is what we have to realize. This life is not all there is. This life is, in fact, a very insignificant period of time. Not that what happens within the scope of our mortal years is insignificant -- don't misunderstand me. Indeed, our eternal fate is determined while we walk this earth.
Instead, when we consider eternity, this life is a drop-in-the-bucket, to borrow a cliché. When a person is four years old, a one year period is one fourth of his whole experience. But for me, looking back some forty years to that age, it is nothing.
But that little diversion does nothing to ease the pain we experience while bearing the mortal coil. To say "time heals all wounds" does nothing to make the present any more bearable.
No, more importantly, we should hold our secular experiences up to the light of the experience of eternity. By that I mean what our eternity holds for us. When we consider the joy, peace, comfort and love that will encompass our lives eternal once we shed the cares of this world and discover the end result of God's grace towards us, the earthly experience pales.
Not only is heaven beyond anything we could ever imagine, we are told this about our time there:
"And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away." (Rev 21:4 NIV)
Paul puts it this way:
"I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus." (Phil 3:10-14 NIV)
And then:
"For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us." (Rom 8:18 NIV)
Maybe this offers little comfort for the present. At best perhaps I can only wish for it to give perspective and therefore hope.
Through the process of our friend's illness, I have witnessed another serendipitous aspect. It seems that his wife is experiencing the grace of God in a very real way. It is so apparent in her undying faith she expresses even in the toughest of times.
A number of years ago, another friend of ours, as she lay on her death bed said this, "I thank God for this cancer. I'm not sure I would have come to know Jesus otherwise. Even though I'm dying, it was worth it."
I had the privilege of conducting the funeral for a man who came to a saving knowledge of Jesus during his last stay in the hospital. Laying there in pain, unable to do anything, he told his wife, "These last few days have been the best days of my life. Why didn't I come to Jesus before now?"
God's grace is sufficient -- in all and through all.
Hope will not disappoint.
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