As I return to blogging on a
different schedule and with a different motivation, I start this year of 2016
with a new awareness of my relationship with God. Time and events can change
your perspective on things. It is enough I share my take on life as I meet it.
In the last few years three
contemporary songs have come out by different artists that have spoken to my
search for peace in this world. The first was by Kerrie Roberts and entitled “No Matter What”. Next Kutlass came out
with “Even If”. The third and most
recent was by Lauren Daegle entitled “Trust
In You”.
The common theme among these
lyrics is the petition to God that may go unanswered. How do you respond when
God doesn’t seem to hear? It’s an idea that goes back as far as the character
of Job in his book by the same name in the Old Testament of the Bible.
The theme is addressed in a
major way in two early works by Phillip Yancey. In Disappointment with God and
Where
Is God When It Hurts, Yancey deals with the question of the silence of
God. Job experienced it in an excruciating way until he is answered by God in a
way that is far from his initial questioning.
Job raised his question with
God and never received an answer to his complaint. He simply got humbled.
Yancey relates example after example involving people who confronted tragedy,
sought the help of God, and did not receive what they sought. Though that is
not always what happens, it happens enough to envy the recipient of God’s grace
in the following miracle.
Mat 8:1 When Jesus came down from the hill, large
crowds followed him.
Mat
8:2 Then a man suffering from a dreaded
skin disease came to him, knelt down before him, and said, "Sir, if you
want to, you can make me clean."
Mat 8:3 Jesus reached out and
touched him. "I do want to," he answered. "Be clean!" At
once the man was healed of his disease.
That is the question for all
believers of Jesus Christ. It is not an issue of if God can heal. It is a
matter of will he heal.
I had already read the books
and come to appreciate the music of Roberts and Kutlass before I was diagnosed
with cancer in the fall of last year. Cancer is something other people have.
It’s something mentioned on prayer concerns list in churches and in
conversations among church members. You don’t expect to have your name
mentioned in the mix however. I looked back at songs and books and wondered if
God was preparing me for what was to come.
No, this is not a sob story.
Tests caught the cancer in early stages. The surgery resulted in a complete
success. Recovery will take a while but that will give me a little extra time
at home to do some additional writing. When I asked Jesus will you heal me, he
did using an excellent doctor in the process.
I find it hard to consider
myself a cancer survivor. I know those who have fought long and terrible
battles to gain that title. I will not come close to what they have had to
experience. Yet that statement still hangs in your mind, “I have had cancer.”
Quoting the lyrics of
Kutlass, I choose to make the response,
“”You are God, You are good
Forever faithful One
Even if the healing
Even if the healing doesn’t come”
The man who came to Jesus
only had doubts in the realm of willingness, never in the realm of ability. Our
goal is to glorify God. That may come with healing from the Great Physician. It
may come most powerfully in the faithfulness of the believer in the face of
silence.
