Easy

Without any idea of breaking my pattern of writing, I believe I have been a bit overdue. Okay, maybe more than a bit overdue.

When I began this blog, the intent was to provide updated information - what the doctors would tell us, how I was feeling, physical things that were going on. As the days went on, though, I found a great deal of strength and peace as I discovered this blog as a way to share not only my current physical story, but how God was revealing himself to me through this illness. Sometimes, the moments of my life - past and present - would be used to impress God's truth on my situation. This then becomes a way for me to show what God continues to do with a broken creature.

Broken, you ask? Sure. Broken in that I bear the effects, the marks of the Fall. We all do. A cup that has a small hole cannot hold liquid very well. It does not perform the task it was designed to perform. I do not do naturally that which I was created for. Can anyone of us say that we do? Even as the redeemed, the adopted sons and daughters of Holy God, we have trouble with our broken nature. Nothing is easy.

In 1967, "Hair" opened off-Broadway. The next year, this rock musical that addressed social, political and religious issues opened on Broadway for a run of 1,750 performances. Although I do not espouse or approve of the positions demonstrated by this play, there is a song that comes from the play that provokes some thought. One year after the play opened on Broadway, Three Dog Night recorded "Easy to Be Hard," one of the band's eleven Top Ten hits over the seven years of its popular run. The song asks the question "How can we be so cruel to each other?" The answer? It is easy to be hard, easy to be proud, easy to be cold, easy to say no.

Today's message spoke directly to this. From the passage in John 15, Jesus is telling his disciples, and us who now await his return, how they can live once he is no longer physically with them. That is, to abide in his love. We must believe that we are in union with Christ, like the branches are with the vine in his illustration. And we have communion with Christ as we keep his commandments and experience his love, the same way that he experienced the Father's love and then loved the disciples. We don't experience God's love because he is pleased with us when we are obedient to him. Rather, we experience God's love just because, because he has chosen to love us, and we are obedient because of that love and that flowing out of us, so that we have abundant joy.

Easy to be hard? Yes. It takes a supernatural event to change us so that we can show love and compassion without any thought of getting back. It takes the supernatural to change our heart so that we love those who do us wrong instead of looking for revenge. It takes the supernatural to fashion our heart so that we love because we have been loved. That supernatural is that God first loved us, and now he lives in our heart, and we have union with him through Jesus his Christ, and our joy is full because we are one with God's beloved.

Our appointment at Georgetown began with Cynth and I each feeling that we did not belong there. She had sent an email the night before to her BSF leader, and included a verse from their Isaiah study that had become important as we waited for word about the next course. Isaiah 41:10 in the NIV reads, "So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you by my righteous right hand." Cynth's leader wrote back using the New American Standard version of this verse because if the picture it presents of our fretting. It reads like this: "Do not fear, for I am with you. Do not look anxiously about you, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, surely I will help you. Surely I will uphold you with my righteous right hand."

And yet here Cynth and I both, without saying so to each other, were "looking anxiously about" us, and letting what we observed in the facilities and people gathered there cloud our spirits, bringing us near to fear, or at least discouragement. I had even said to myself, "God, how did we get here?" I had begun to think of ways to get out of going through with the appointment. Even then God's truth that he was with me, that he would strengthen me, stayed me and quieted my spirit. We met with the doctors, and learned that, although there were a few possible trials that would be at the least interesting to see how I would respond given that I've only had the one type of treatment, they felt there were still too many good options of standard care for me. Cynth and I confessed our thoughts as we left, and then we saw God's hand in providing that opportunity to hear another doctor review our history and provide potential courses of treatment. We also saw his hand in closing that door.

So now we go to Medical Oncology and Hematology of Northern Virginia to see Dr Felice again. This time to learn about the next step of treatment, likely a modified regimen of what I was on before, but we'll know more on Wednesday.

Someone asked me earlier about how we've experienced God's love through this. Certainly it has been in the provision of doctors and appointments every step of the way. And we have experienced it in the love of his people, in the prayers offered up, the phone calls, the cards, the meals. Lastly, we know his love in the opportunities given to share him with so many others, now a primary purpose of this blog. I ask you to pray with me for Herbie, my step-father Bob, Emmett, Sid, and the family of a friend of Cynth's who this week passed into God's presence. And pray with me that this blog will be a tool used by God to build his kingdom. God bless you all.