Perhaps one of the most important lessons that can come from
such times is this very recognition – God owes us no answers – and we MUST make
peace with that fact. The TRUST He
expects of us, after all, doesn’t come
with qualifications: “I’ll trust you IF You tell me what’s going on”, or “IF You
explain to me the eternal significance”.
Trust means we believe that God is God and we’re not. Hope means resting in the knowledge that the
future will be good because of what we know about God’s nature … so much so
that we can be assured “that ALL things work together into a pattern
for good” because God is Who He is.
He is loving and He is love itself. He is righteous and righteousness itself. He is graciousness and He is grace itself. He is good and He is goodness. For Love, Righteousness, and Grace do not
exist apart from Him. They have their definition and existence in His
character. As I wrote in an earlier
post, we can never hold God’s actions up against some independent standard of
love, or righteousness, or grace because no such standard exists. He IS the standard and these ideas exist in
the first place because of Who He is.
Without God, there is no such thing as love or righteousness or
grace. And one of the most important and foundational
truths that we can learn as we see Christian maturity is to trust Him for all
things, at all times, in every situation, without explanation, without excuse,
and without WHINING!
The purpose of this life is NOT to make us happy and give us
an easy time of it. In fact, we’ve been
promised quite the opposite – that this life will be difficult, the path will
be narrow, and it will be filled with trials.
Learning these truths does not make it much easier to go through the dark
valleys, but it does help process the things God allows to come our way and
helps keep our focus on the Way forward.
I’ve heard it taught that we shouldn’t pray for God to remove the trials
from our lives, but rather that the lessons they bring would not be lost. That’s sound wisdom. I’m afraid I’m not quite there yet though and
I most certainly find myself regularly praying for deliverance and a swift end
to suffering, be it my own or my loved ones.
Maybe one day I’ll be better at that part. But when the answer comes back “Not yet”, it’s
a little easier to understand why when I recognize my place in His eternal
perspective.
Nevertheless, every once in awhile, He does give us the gift
of a small glimpse into His plan – into the eternal clockworks of the awesome
machinery that drives the universe forward according to His will and
design. We should always be extremely
grateful when He allows us such insights, no matter how tiny. And the glimpse I received a few days ago, if
that’s even what it was, is indeed a tiny one.
But it brought me great joy to see the working of God’s hand in our
lives and to be able to assign even a little “purpose” to an event that had
actually caused great pain in my family’s and my lives.
If you’ve followed recent event in my blog here at all, you
probably know about the misdiagnosis of Daniel’s leukemia that happened a
couple weeks ago. After having been told
that Daniel’s condition was a more easily treatable type of disease and that
the current success rate was in the 90-95% range, we got a devastating blow. A very specialized cytogenetic test was done
and when the results came back, they indicated that Daniel had a rare condition
that was linked to a much lower probability of success. In an instant, his prognosis dropped from 95%
down to 60% or lower. I briefly
described the sensation of the world collapsing in around me in that instant
and my own inability to even breathe.
There were some sleepless nights, enormous amounts of prayer, and a
wrestling match with Fear that would have put Rocky to shame. All of this served as an indicator of my own
poor faith and shone the light on a number of areas that needed
improvement. But it also prompted a single
text message to a good friend that set off a chain reaction resulting in a trip
the following day to see an Amish healer named Solomon Wickey.
I wrote briefly about this trip in an earlier
post, but to summarize, we were granted a rare “emergency” appointment with
this man who is known and respected literally world-wide for his healing
ministry and has literally healed thousands of people from life-threatening and
terminal diseases over his 30+ years of ministry. We were in his presence for not much more
than 10-15 minutes and he pronounced Daniel as having been “released” from the
disease that was threatening his life. We
weren’t sure what to think. We’re STILL
not sure what to think. I continue to
await God’s direct confirmation to me of Daniel’s complete deliverance from
Leukemia, but until that happens I feel I have no choice but to continue
forward with the traditional approach – hoping – praying – believing that he is
in fact completely healed. And though
the doctors reported only a few days later that Daniel had in fact responded
ASTOUNDINGLY well to the first 2 weeks of treatment and was unexpectedly
already in complete remission (they neglected to use the word “miraculous” of
course! :-) I still don’t feel I have enough confirmation to pull him off of
the chemotherapy. Only about 2 days
later, the doctors discovered a mistake in the interpretation of the genetic
testing results and immediately came back to us stating that he was NOT in a
super-high risk category after all. His
prognosis was still in fact in the 90-95% range and they apologized for the
error. Obviously, this was a huge relief
to everyone and we thanked God for, in a sense, restoring our son to us (ala
Abraham & Isaac in Gen 22) But anyway,
that’s not the point of this story.
It was a couple weeks later before it finally dawned on me
that, had the doctor’s error in interpreting the test results not occurred –
the tiny mistake that made for perhaps the darkest and most difficult weekend
of my life thus far – I almost certainly would never have made the
trip up to see Solomon Wickey. And
though I don’t know the results of that trip for certain, I tend to believe
that some miraculous things happened at that time in all our lives. And so the “lights came on” about how, in
just this tiny little instance, God in fact kept His promise in a powerful way …
that something that had the appearance of evil DID in fact work together into a
pattern for good. His hand was there at
work the whole time, through the whole ordeal.
Not only was the trip up to see Solomon prompted, but I learned a number
of things about areas in my own life needing work as well as some areas where
God has already made improvements in me.
An enormous amount of prayer support was generated, and also wheels were
set in motion that we believe will be bringing forth a series of events to help
bring awareness, raise money, and bring additional glory to God through some
good friends of ours (but more on that another time).
It was literally in the same few minutes that I received
this small revelation that God brought another thought to my mind. If you’ve read my previous blogs, you’ve
already seen this, but I had been contemplating (for obvious reasons now),
Romans 8:28, “And we know that all things work together
for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.” Suddenly, the word “ALL” came to the center of
my attention. I’ve literally heard
entire sermons preached on the meaning and significance of this word in the context
of this passage. It’s a powerful
word. But what made it especially
significant to ME at this particular point in time was the recognition that
these 3 letters A-L-L are
also those used in the abbreviation of Daniel’s particular brand of
leukemia. It’s properly titled “Acute
Lymphoblastic Leukemia” – A.L.L. And so,
right after God’s revelation of how He had used the doctors’ mistake to in fact
bring a unique blessing into our lives, He pointed out that … EVEN “A.L.L.
things
work together for good for those who love God…”
-
- Tim -
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