(For those that aren't aware, my wife is posting updates on my medical situation through a caring bridge site.  The things I post here will generally not include details about my diagnosis or treatment.  Here I focus on what God is teaching me as I walk this path of cancer, grief, and tested faith.)

     I shouldn't be talking about my death. Or at least that's what some of my brothers and sisters in Christ would suggest. They caution Christians that to talk about our illnesses as if they might end in death (even a few years down the road, as in my case) is to lack faith that God will heal us. I disagree.

     It is with great love for these brothers and sisters that I disagree with them. I do not doubt that they love the Lord and I know their faith is great, perhaps greater than mine. But I don't believe that accepting death as a possible or even likely outcome is a lack of faith. To believe that would be to give faith a power that God has not given it. Faith is accepting the world as God presents it to us and living in response to that reality.

     For example, the world tells me to work as much as I can and that my worth comes from my productivity. God tells me to stop every seventh day and that my value comes from my creation and redemption at his hands, and not from what I produce. Faith accepts God's script and takes a Sabbath rest. The world tells me that people who hurt me and who sin against me deserve my hatred, my acts of revenge, or (if I'm feeling kind) my cold shoulder. God tells me to love them. Faith accepts God's rendering of the world and moves towards our enemies in love. Faith is not what makes the Sabbath beautiful or what makes my enemy love-worthy. Faith is my action in response to the reality that God presents. And so faith can only respond to what God has clearly said is true.

     When it comes to my cancer, faith can only respond to the truths that God is in control, that he has numbered my days, that he does all things well, that he is able to heal, and that I may rejoice and glorify him in all circumstances of my life. Do I believe God can heal me and extend my days beyond what the doctors expect? Absolutely. Do I have certain assurance from him that he will do so? No I do not. And that is because God typically works through what we call "ordinary means." When an orange falls from a tree branch, is God able to stop it from hitting the ground? Absolutely, no doubt about it. Do we have reason to believe he will? No. Because unless he has a special reason to intervene, God allows the ordinary means that he has created - gravity, weather, photosynthesis, cellular mitosis, entropy, etc. - to work the way he designed them to work. Even sinful and sad parts of his creation work this way, things that will not exists in the New Heavens and Earth (Revelation 21:4), things like earthquakes, predators, mental illness, and even cancer.   

     I have always considered that the work of the physical sciences is simply a matter of learning to describe the way the world works when God isn't intervening in a miraculous way. Right now, scientists know a lot about how our bodies work, and they know a good bit about how cancer works, and they know some about how surgery, radiation, and medicines can affect cancers. And they know, through repeated observation, how long a body usually lives with certain types of cancer. To acknowledge that is no different than acknowledging that eating certain foods makes our bodies fat or sick. God could prevent that in a particular person's life, if he chose to. But unless he steps in and does something extra-ordinary (meaning "out of the ordinary"), then the human body and all of nature operate according to what is "ordinary."  

     My attitude is not, I think, defeatist. Instead, I find myself resonating with the faith of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in Daniel 3:17-18, "Our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.” Do you see that? They believe 1) God is able to miraculously deliver them; 2) they believe God will deliver them; 3) but if he does not deliver them, they will continue to walk in obedience. They accepted that God might not choose to intervene to save them, and if so, then people thrown into a furnace will ordinarily burn. But that won't change their faith. Their confidence is not based on whether or not God steps in, their confidence is that serving God is right, no matter how their story plays out.

     God is able to heal me. Maybe he will heal me (I do really pray he would). But if not, I still worship, serve, obey, follow, love, and thank him. Perhaps my personality and life experience leads me to speak more about the "but if not" than the earlier part of their declaration. That's not a lack of faith. That's an acceptance of the reality that God has given us, a reality where many sicknesses lead to death, where many relationships end in pain, where the righteous don't always get justice, and where creation itself groans in frustration until this broken physical world is made new again and the bodies of God's children are made new (Romans 8:19-23).

     I said I resonate with the faith of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Maybe that's not true. Maybe they had a greater expectation than I do that God will miraculously disrupt. Maybe my faith is a little more like Job's. In the midst of his suffering (which far exceeds my own), he declares of God, "Though he slay me, I will hope in him" (Job 13:15). Job acknowledges that God is the one that heals, yes.  But he is also the God who slays.  And yet we still put our hope in him.  And as Job contemplates the direction his life seems to be taking, he confidently says through his pain: "For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another" (Job 19:25-27). All along, Job has affirmed that God is able to relieve his suffering. All along Job has prayed for just that. But his faith is not a confident expectation that God will act a certain way; his faith (and mine) is that God is our only hope, no matter what course our lives take.