Color Me Yellow

Forgive me while I use my blog for a little therapy. A year ago today I was laying in a hospital bed getting prepped for cancer surgery. It's funny--not in a necessarily humorous way--how life can change so quickly. One day you're doing fine and the next day life throws you a curve that you never anticipated. I remember having a mixture of feelings last year. In some ways I was calm and figured I could handle whatever came my way thanks to the example of my wife who handled her breast cancer so wonderfully. But I also recall laying in bed wondering if I'd make it to the end of 2005. I'm not normally into bargaining with God, but I did ask Him if it would be all right if I could live long enough to see my granddaughter be born. I just didn't know what the future held at that moment and it was eery.

But in the midst on anxious feelings, God was at work to graciously bring some peace. My primary care doctor was out of town that weekend my cancer diagnosis came and a surgeon I didn't know was assigned to my case. I had hoped to have Beth's surgeon, Dr. Smith, do my surgery, but he had also been out of town that weekend and my surgery was scheduled for Monday at 1:00 p.m. The morning of my surgery, my doctor, Dr. Aikin, showed up early for rounds and he humorously chided me for being a difficult patient to diagnose. Then he told me that he had called Dr. Smith and Dr. Smith had cleared his schedule because he wanted to assist with my surgery. When I heard that, a sense of relief poured over me, because I knew I would be in good hands. What a wonderful answer to an unspoken prayer!

Just before I got wheeled into surgery, my brother-in-law came and prayed with me which was so encouraging because I knew his prayer represented a lot of prayers that were being prayed on my behalf. When Dr. Smith came by I couldn't even begin to express my gratitude to him for his gift to me of assisting with my surgery.

Then I got wheeled into surgery, and as they say, the rest is history. The next three days are blank for me (aren't drugs wonderful?!), but the next few weeks were a time of deep reflection for me.

One of the things that struck me was this: For years as a pastor I've talked about the conflict between God and Satan taking place against the grand backdrop of the universe. Now it struck me that it not only takes place on that stage, but it takes place on the cellular level as well. My body was the stage on which good and evil would wage war to see who would win. I don't know why that thought had never struck me before, but now it hit me in a way it had never before that sin penetrates and affects us at even the microscopic level.

For now, God has won the battle for my physical body. Should time last long enough, even that battle will be lost. But ultimately, though an occasional battle is lost, God won the war on the cross of Calvary when Jesus gave His life for you and me.

Tomorrow is LiveStrong Day, a day to honor cancer survivors by wearing yellow. I don't have much yellow in my wardrobe, so I'll settle for wearing a LiveStrong bracelet. Would you join me in honoring survivors tomorrow? But even more, wear yellow for yourself, because Jesus died on the cross to wipe out the cancer of sin from this world so that we can all count ourselves as survivors. I don't know about you, but color me yellow!