Drawing Near

Hi, everybody.

     Vonnie says I need to bring you up to date on my health status.  I think I am finally at a place where I can share it with some degree of clarity.  I also know there are more stories going on in the world than mine, so don't feel obligated to read this.  Sensory overload can be annoying, and I don't want to be annoying to you.

So, for those who might want an update, here is the latest.  I have what is called, "Primary Interosseous Squamous Carcinoma."  It began as a cancer in the oral cavity.  It has returned in the left neck area affecting lymph nodes.  Surgery was conducted on Friday, March 23. 

     I saw my surgeon for a first follow-up visit on March 29 and he told me he felt the immediate result of surgery is progressing nicely and that this part of the journey was successful. My neck is very swollen; this along with the scar from the surgery stares me down every time I look into the mirror. My energy level is nebulous, at best, and demanding great patience on my part -- something that doesn't come easily with me.  

     The sobering news in this is that I will have to have both radiation and chemotherapy.  Radiation I knew about.  We were waiting on the pathology report as to chemotherapy. In the surgery they removed and examined 61 nodes.  Enough of those nodes revealed cancer cells that chemotherapy was determined to be essential to the healing and recovery process.  These treatments will begin in about three weeks or so.  Dr. Kokot told me of possible side effects I should be aware of and that most likely I will have some difficult days, particularly late in the process.   Every person responds individually, however, so we'll see when it is time to cross that bridge.

     This is the physical side of the story.  Thank God, however, that there is more to life than the physical.  Truth is that what makes the physical tolerable, even thrilling and blessed, is that the Divine has entered into the physical world, and lives here.  Our world has been invaded by the Maker of heaven and earth.  In Christ, so says Mr. Wesley, "He…emptied Himself of all but love, and bled for Adam's helpless race." So present is God in the human situation that we are free to pray, in the words of Augustus Toplady, "Rock of Ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in Thee."  How many times I have prayed this prayer and found God to open the door of His grace and welcome me into the place of divine protection, love, and mercy.
     The writer of Hebrews says, "We do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin.  Therefore, let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need" (Hebrews. 4:15-16). 

     This is a time of "drawing near" for me, a time of hearing the voice of my "great high Priest, who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God" (Heb. 4:14).  I am comfortable within the embrace of God, and come what may, nothing can snatch me out of the "Rock of Ages, cleft for me."

     I don't like what is happening to me; in fact, there are moments when, quite frankly, it infuriates me.  Don't think for a moment that I am taking all these things too lightly; I am not.  At the same time it is the conviction of my heart that Jesus Is Lord.  On the mountain or in the valley Jesus Is Lord.  Cancer is not Lord.  It has a big bite and announces itself with a big bark, but it is not Lord.  Jesus Is Lord.  In this light, Martin Luther has given me the words for my testimony as I walk this valley of deep darkness.  He said,

“Feelings come and feelings go,
and feelings are deceiving;
My warrant is the Word of God--
Naught else is worth believing.


Though all my heart should feel condemned
for want of some sweet token,
There is One greater than my heart
Whose Word cannot be broken.


I'll trust in God's unchanging Word
Till soul and body sever,
For, though all things shall pass away,
HIS WORD SHALL STAND FOREVER!”

            Thank you, Mr. Luther.  I'm in --- 100%.  As Eliza Hewett wrote in 1891,

My faith has found a resting place—
Not in device or creed:
I trust the ever living One—
His wounds for me shall plead…

I need no other argument,
I need no other plea;
It is enough that Jesus died,
And that He died for me.

     That's it for now.  God bless you all.

FORWARD STILL,

Rick

The "Even Though"

 Sometimes life takes us where we don't want to go.  Powers greater than ourselves speak and we find that whether or not we like it a journey has been give us.  The only thing we can do is decide how we will walk that journey.

           

David's testimony has become the testimony of countless millions of people; it is certainly mine -- "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, You are with me" (Ps. 23:4).  What a profound hope we have in Christ, our Shepherd.  Everyone who trusts in Christ says, "Surely goodness and lovingkindness will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever" (Ps. 23:6). 

           

In Christ, we are not defined by what happens to us.  We are defined by Who walks with us.  Valleys come and valleys go but Jesus sticks with us "closer than a brother" (Prov. 18:24).  He says to us when we are on the journey, "Come to Me, all who are weary and heaven-laden, and I will give rest" (Matt. 11:28).  Each day He gives us strength for the journey.  Each day He lives in us as Lord and Savior.

Because of Jesus I can say,

Nothing that happens can hurt me

Whether I lose or win;

Life may be changed on the surface,

But I do my main living within.[1]

           

Because of Jesus we can say (and may I personalize it),

Through many dangers, toils and snares...
I have already come.
T''was Grace that brought me safe thus far...
and Grace will lead me home[2].

---

[1] This poem was written by the grandfather of a college roommate, David Rodes.  Dr. R.C. Gunstream was a District Superintendent in the Church of the Nazarene, a great pastor, and a wonderful man of God.

[2] Third verse of Amazing Grace by John Newton, 1779.

 

Mind-Boggling Grace

 

It’s a story of outrageous, mind-boggling grace.  It makes skeptics laugh out loud, the doubter question the logic of it all, and believers to bow before Jesus and call Him Lord.  The thought of feeding over five thousand people with a small boy’s lunch of a couple of sardine-size fish and five small barley loaves, is a bit much, don’t you think?

           

Then, again, the whole of idea of God coming into history in the person of Jesus is a bit much.  Feeding five thousand people is a minimal concern if the incarnation of God into history really did, in fact, occur.   If Jesus really is God with us there is something more going on by the Sea of Galilee than who is buying lunch—something wonderful and mysterious and powerful and God-like?

           

By sunset the people were reaching conclusions about Jesus, one of them being, “This is truly the Prophet who is to come into the world” (John 6:14).  They saw something that made them think more deeply than about their hungry tummies.  They saw God in Jesus that day.

           

Interestingly enough when John tells this story he doesn’t call it a miracle, like we do.  He called in a “sign” (vs. 14).  It was sign to point them to something deeper than the need for lunch.  They needed God, and they needed God now.  They didn’t need a miracle worker, they needed God.    

           

By the way, we don’t need a miracle worker either.  We need God.  We need to humble ourselves before God and let God do what God does.  We need to let God be God in us.  If God gives you a lunch today enjoy it, but know that you will be hungry by sundown.  However, if He gives you the bread of His life, you will never go hungry again in your inner being.  At Sundown on all the days yet to come, you will still be satisfied because in Him you have “eternal life” (John 6:54).

Good Business or Good Faithfulness

Jesus caught a lot of people off guard one day when he walked into the temple in Jerusalem and saw that it had been turned into a business center.  Watching the activities of selling and purchasing sheep and doves and oxen, animals essential to the Passover meals, He made a whip of certain cords at His disposal and cleared the temple, turning over tables and pouring out coins and seeing to it that bodies were scampering for safety.  As he did so someone heard Him say, “Take these things away; stop making My Father’s house a place of business” (Luke 2:16).

The authorities approached Him and demanded He tell them by what authority He was acting in such a way.  He told them He was acting on the authority of a greater temple then the one they were violating.  He was acting on the authority of His own life, a life that, upon dying, would rise again in three days.  It took them forty-six years to build the temple they finally hijacked and turned into a place of business.  It would take Him three days to conquer the wages of sin, death, and rise up to establish Himself once and for all forever, as King of kings and Lord of lords.

During the midst of the activities that day in the temple Jesus’ disciples remembered something from their Scriptures about the coming Messiah, “Zeal for Your house Will consume Me.”  What Jesus did that day was an act of faithfulness to the Father and a reminder that the ways of God can’t be short-circuited, and that using the ways of the world to accomplish the will of God is not acceptable.  It might be good business but it is not good faithfulness.

In Isaiah 56:7 our Scriptures tell us, “My house will be called a house of prayer for all the peoples."  Everything the church does, all she might possess, the actions she might take, the life she lives must take into consideration that the greater Temple is our Temple, and His name is Jesus; and, Jesus calls us to let the Church be the Church. 

Embraced By Grace

Platitudes and I don't get along too well.  There is no place in faith for empty comments, trivia, clichés, banality.  Life is too real, the consequences too serious, the battle too intense, and the implications too eternal, to major on minors or to reduce God down to bumper sticker theology. 

In this very real and troubled world we find ourselves enveloped in harsh realities of a thousand kinds.  Followers of Christ are not exempt.  There are forces at work ranging from tribulation to distress to persecution to famine to nakedness to peril and to sword (see Roman 8:35). If you have not made peace with this yet, do it soon.

Make peace with something else, also.  In the mist of all these dangers, in Christ "we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us" (Rom. 8:37).  Our lives are embraced by grace and in the magnificent power of God there is nothing, in and of itself, that can take us down -- "neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor power, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing" (Rom. 8:38-39). 

Is this a too reckless optimism?  I think not.  When Jesus was raised up from the dead He set into motion a reality that trumps every other reality.  The image of a resurrected Lord is stamped onto every event life might throw at us.  Even death itself is not longer the enemy that does us in.  Jesus is so much Lord that He said, "He who believes in Me will live even if he dies" (John 11:25). 

None of us is going to get out of this physical world alive.  None of us have to see tragedy and death as the final statement about our lives.  The free grace of God is extended and every one of us is invited into fellowship with God, a fellowship that ultimately and finally is stamped in a victory won for all eternity.

PS:  To read the entire Romans 8:31-39 passage click here.