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When the Answer is No

I hate cancer. Like a thief in the night, the emaciating disease invades the body and steals life. There is no respecter of person, body type, or age and the cancerous tentacles are far more reaching than the person it kills. Cancer destroys homes, crushes relationships, dashes dreams, and shakes rock-solid faith.
Cancer proliferates, devastates, and destroys in a cruel, uncontrolled, meaningless way.
This past year, cancer invaded my life. Not my body, but my life. Someone so dear to me died in his forties. Once the diagnosis came, everything stopped. Then, he was gone. So many faith-filled people prayed, begged, fasted, and jumped through all the hoops we think God wants us to so we can have our prayers answered. There were so many questions as to why God did not answer, but God did answer. The answer was no.

"A time to be born and a time to die; a time to plant and a time to uproot what is planted." -Ecclesiastes 3:2 

We know by scripture that there is a time for everything, and everything is in God's perfect timing. The Bible also tells us before we were in the womb, God already had a plan for us. It's easier to believe this disease comes out of nowhere and destroys lives than to believe God never intended for life to go on past a certain time. Because when we acknowledge that truth, we become angry at the one who gave us life from the start. He decides, not us. In our humanity, but I think even more so as Christians, we try to manipulate God into doing what we want rather than asking for His plan. When things do not turn out the way we want, we throw a temper tantrum and make excuses for bad behavior. What must be truly heartbreaking to Him is in our despair we miss all the answered prayers. The prayers that brought supernatural provision, the outpouring of love, support, and compassion that came from friends, family, and even strangers, and the testimonies of a life well-lived.

This morning as my sweet cousin was on my mind, I pondered all of these things. I saw Jesus on the cross. God's only son. We take comfort that Jesus came, died for our sins, rose again for us. We rejoice in the fact that He was born to die in his thirties because He did that for us. Think about this though. Jesus was not honored as a war hero who conquered the enemy in a great historical battle. The Son of God did not go out in a blaze of glory. He did not lie in state for a week or have a beautiful memorial service honoring all that he accomplished in his life. Jesus, the Savior of humanity, died alone half-naked nailed to a tree so brutally beaten he was unrecognizable. His death was cruel, unfair, unwarranted, humiliating, untimely, and inhumane. And it was all for me. And it was all for you.

We will all die one day whether it is today, tomorrow, or 50 years from now. We will all stand before our maker. At that time, it will not matter how we died, or what we endured, but rather how we lived. So, live well, friends.

Genesis 15:6, "Then, Abraham believed in (affirmed, trusted in, relied on, remained steadfast to) the Lord; and He counted (credited) it to him as righteousness (doing right in regard to God and man).

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