“Teach us to realize the brevity of life, so that we may grow in wisdom.”
Psalm 90:12
“Satisfy us each morning with your unfailing love so we may sing for joy to the end of our lives.”
Psalm 90:14
“He’s a dead man walking. I give him 4-6 months -at most.”
Through a quavering voice, my dad conveyed this prognosis from a pathologist who didn’t mince words when he shared this with his general practitioner. The pathologist was wrong about the timing but right about the fact that this cancer would end my dad’s life.
He was only 59 years old when this grim news shattered his (our) world. A diagnosis like this is the fear that taunts us in the night. The “what if” that comes to fruition. It’s where the “rubber meets the road” in our faith. And it’s where we truly discover if our satisfaction and hope are grounded in a God who loves us or in the temporary pleasures of this life.
My dad called cancer a fraternity he was forced to join. It instantly connected him to thousands of people who had gone before him and those suffering the same fate alongside him. When you join this “fraternity” doctors carefully and constantly prepare you for the toll it will take on your body.
But a death sentence affects much more than your body.
It forces you on a spiritual journey as well. Regardless of what you believe about life after death, it ultimately causes a transfer of hope- from the temporal to the eternal.
I remember very clearly the day I saw my dad’s hope shift from a cure on this side of heaven to a longing for what awaited him on the other side of heaven. After 8 years of battling this disease, celebrating victories, recovering from disappointments, and wrestling with the unknowns, he asked me to visit him at his home in another state. The first morning, he saw me reading my Bible and sat with me. As our conversation ensued, he asked me to share with him every verse I could find about what heaven and his new body would be like.
We spent a week combing the scriptures and, oddly, found great hope- even excitement for what his eyes would soon see and his soul would soon experience.
We had rich conversations about his life – his greatest joys and deepest regrets. We laughed, we cooked, and we cried together. I often revisit in my mind that time together and thank God for the gift He gave me that week.
The assurance of those left behind.
I once heard a pastor say the greatest gift we can leave our families is the assurance of our salvation. I agree.
This week was a blessed gift – greater than any extravagant gift my dad ever gave me. I honestly don’t know when my dad decided he believed the Gospel. It may have been when he was a child growing up in church, it may have been in adulthood, or it could have been ushered in through this terrible disease.
But I do know that during this week, I watched a peace wash over him that surpassed all understanding. And that peace was evidence that he trusted the words we read together to be true.
Life is riddled with heartache and pain.
We engage in a constant dance, partnering with grief and joy. No one escapes this shuffle, which is why it is essential to seek and find truth about God and eternity.
Nine years after his diagnosis, my dad exchanged this earthly dwelling for his eternal home. He left this world with peace – peace of an eternal joy that far outweighs anything this world has to offer. He believed Jesus was the stairway between earth and heaven. He anticipated the day that his pain-riddled body would be replaced with one untouched by disease. And he longed for a warm embrace from the One whose nail-pierced hands prepared a place for him.
This is blessed hope.
It’s anchored above but felt within. It permeates every fiber of our being and filters all the news we fear.
It allows us to sing in our deepest sorrow and know satisfaction apart from our circumstances because of God’s unfailing love. And the beauty of this hope is that it is freely given to all who choose to believe and love the One whose life, death, and resurrection made it possible.
