With God, cancer can't win
This is a different devotional to the usual, but I hope you find it helpful. Last weekend, we gathered a stellar group to talk about facing cancer with God, including cancer specialists, those who have lost loved ones, cancer sufferers and those healed of cancer. Here are a few headlines – the video of the morning will be available soon.
According to the NHS, 1 in 2 of us have a cancer diagnosis before we die. Thankfully, many cancers are treatable, but the impact of cancer still touches most of us. I lost my dear friends, Julia, Jo and Sonja to cancer.
Understandably, we don’t often discuss it. Cancer’s scary – a worrying 25% of people ignore troubling symptoms rather than visiting a doctor. And for Christians, how can we answer the agonising cry of WHY? I know from when my husband suddenly died that no answer is ever enough when grief grips you.
But I have found comfort in this - “Underneath are the everlasting arms” (Deuteronomy 33:27)
Underneath. There is nowhere so low that God can’t meet us there.
God doesn’t sit above the clouds with his arms crossed, sending cancer packages, or any other trial, to punish us. No, God came down, underneath the clouds, down into our mess and pain and grief, all the way to a Cross to meet us there.
When we think we’re in freefall, at the bottom of it all, is the embrace of God.
Underneath ARE -
We heard moving stories on Saturday about how God is an ever-present help on the cancer journey. Henrik told the amazing story of his miraculous healing but also the gruelling journey before it and how even before being healed, he had discovered a new measure of God’s love which made the journey into a fear-free zone, despite a terrible prognosis. Others spoke with vulnerable honesty about the tough journey but also of how God wonderfully held them, turning bad to good.
We had the privilege of having two consultants speaking of how their faith inspires them to seek for God’s healing through medicine. Dr Lopez, who is based at the Royal Marsden explained how God has created solutions for our bodies to deal with cancer cells and her job is to find them. She described how God inspired one breakthrough in a dream. She has been involved in literally hundreds of drug advances. Pray for her and others working in this field!
Underneath are the everlasting arms.
Cancer threatens us with death, but Jesus rebuts that with this - he is everlasting life - life that breaks out of a tomb, telling us that our story ends with glory, not a floating on the clouds glory but a solid, tangible, big hugs and fine wines and sunset walks kind of glory.
Underneath are the everlasting arms.
I spent this week imagining God’s everlasting arms - stretched out on a Cross, catching us falling, lifting us up like my son lifting up my granddaughter, carrying us, comforting us. If you are reading this and have cancer, or someone you love does, I pray for a vision of those everlasting arms.
Charles Spurgeon wrote, “The everlasting arms means first of all that God himself is close to us, guaranteeing the eternal safety of all who trust in him. Of course, where anyone’s arms are, there they are – God isn’t divided from his own arms. That’s our joy and comfort – God is with us!”
That’s the message we heard on Saturday morning – God is with us, able to hold what we cannot carry, even the great weight of those we love. The Big C is not to be feared, because we have an even bigger God and underneath are the everlasting arms.
