Cancer - the Current Crisis - Got Faith?

Living with cancer is like looking at life under a magnifying glass. It can, as in this case, accentuate basic concepts that are true for all of us.

Since chemotherapy, I feel like there's a mean monster living inside my body.

One day I'm writhing in agony. There's bone pain...crazy head pain...muscle aches. It might last a few days...might last a week...maybe a few hours.

Other days, the agonies simmer just below the surface. Those are the good days.

It's been impossible to predict the relentless spikes in pain. There's no way to guess when the debilitation will occur or how long it will last.

Sometimes I might be fairly functional. Other times, I'm stopped dead in my tracks.

There's no rhyme or reason. It's unpredictable and uncontrollable.

I expected to feel much better by now, but that's not happening.

A friend called recently and asked how I was doing.

"I'm not in control," I complained. "I can't plan anything. I can't predict what's going to happen tomorrow."

Suddenly I paused, pondering what I'd just said.

She's healthy, but really, was my situation any different than hers? Do any of us really know what tomorrow holds?

I laughed. I had no reason to whine. "That's true for all of us, isn't it?"


Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town and spend a year there, doing business and making money." Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, "If the Lord wishes, we will live and do this or that."     James 4: 13-15