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LIVING WITH OR DYING FROM
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| One thing about having
an authentic diagnosed disease is that it makes you aware of what lots
of people around you are dealing with all the time. |
| I’ve always known
people who bore their troubles mostly in silence, with outward courage
and grace. We’re always happier when folks don’t wave their problems before
us like banners. |
| Poor old Job is well
understood by those with troubles. So is the Apostle Paul. That guy was
one step ahead of death most of his career. He talks about a “thorn in
the flesh” that he prays would go away. It doesn’t, so he lives with it.
I’m glad we don’t know what it was because it allows all sufferers to think
maybe he shared our path. |
| When it comes to mortality
issues it is best to be realistic. If we don’t have a diagnosed life-threatening
issue at the moment, the day will come. It is the price of living. After
mid-life there is a tendency to wonder whether each unusual ache or symptom
is “it.” There is also a tendency to try to guess likely longevity. Spend
now, or save in case you live long enough to need it? |
| If one is allowed
to know the personal situations of people—as ministers often do—it is rare
to find anyone totally free from some “thorn” with which they live. Most
of us have no idea. As a minister I have walked through the grocery store,
meeting people I have known many years. One has been living with cancer
for 15 years. Another is living with the memory of a tragic death that
still haunts. One lives with daily treatments of insulin. One robust looking
guy goes to the hospital 2 or 3 times a week for dialysis therapy. A lady
keeps her mental balance with help of a strong daily drug. These are the
invisible “thorns.” |
| If you really look
at people you see that many are living with a body they didn’t choose,
with genetic traits outside the norm of admirable appearance. |
| You get the idea.
The wonder is not what we will die from, but what we must live with. |
| Paul (the interesting
Christian apostle) drops a line to ponder. “I die daily.” Of course we
do. All of us do. A little bit at a time. We translate moments of our lives
into eternity as our ship of life plows through the seas. We leave parts
of ourselves behind. What we were last week or last year or ten years ago
or fifty years ago is no more. |
| Our local summer newspaper,
the Tacoma News Tribune, often publishes photos of deceased people on the
Obituary page. It is fashionable for people to print a photo many years
old. Actually, the person in that old photo has been dead and gone, irrecoverable,
except in memory and dreams, for years and years. |
| But that is off the
subject. Psalm 90 dares to remind us that we are like grass, that the years
of our lives may be three score and ten, or maybe with luck, four score.
Whatever, we are soon gone and we fly away. Everyone dies from something.
But the psalmist admonishes: “Teach us to number our days that we might
apply our hearts unto wisdom.” I take that as an encouragement to live
with what life lays upon us with faithfulness courage and grace. Whatever
our diagnosis, the name of the game is to live with it. I celebrate whatever
it is in the human spirit—the God center—that makes it possible for us
to live with, above, beyond our troubles. |
| With all his troubles,
Paul professed, “For me to live is Christ.” He saw his frail life as part
of something far beyond himself. He was part of a larger picture. What
needs to die in us is our inflated ego. What needs to increase is our sense
of belonging beyond ourselves.
— Art Morgan, September 2000
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