One of the verses that Kelly and I have kept close to us is a familiar favorite from the well known Psalm 23 .
The 4th verse in the chapter is:
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil;
For You are with me;
Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.” NKJV
Seemingly, traversing the medical industry down this path (a couple of times now) of what and/or how bad is it, met by we don’t know, and onto the next doctor, can feel a lot like the shadow of the valley of death. One cannot help but know that there is potentially a monster waiting in the horizon and impatience can set in. Yet in this case, it sort of feels like walking down into the shadow of the valley of death, but seeing light and life around me amid the nearby surrounding perimeter of darkness in the not too far off distance. I chalk that up to we do not fear. As I take a look at why there is no fear, it is because of God given faith and trust that I can only explain by the prayers being offered all around us. There is so much unknown and out of our control, God is carrying us through this and shielding us from worry and fear.
I recently read “Hidden Christmas” by one of my absolute favorite authors and thinkers Tim Keller, which for what it’s worth is the usual fast read, excellent book by Keller. In the book there is a section where he talks about “hearing well”. What does it mean to “hear well”? I guess I should probably start to tackle that question by offering what hearing well is not. “Hearing well” is not demonstrated by hearing the words, but then failing to absorb and write them into your memory by thinking about them. A funny, but very real, example would be my household’s Chief Social Director and wife will often verbally make me aware of things on our forever busy calendar by saying, “Jim, we are going to do xyz on this day at this time”. I often respond from the position of being face down in a laptop with an “ok” or “alright” having heard the words, but completely failing to write it to my memory by thinking about what was said. As the story goes, the day arrives and I am clueless of the plans, and sometimes a bit put off that I did not hear about this earlier. Kelly usually patiently responds by reiterating what the plans are and that she told me at x place, y time and day, and I wasn’t listening, again.
Keller goes on to cite an exercise he went through in his training where the instructor asked each member of the class to take a given verse and spend 30 minutes and write down everything that hit them about the verse. Interestingly enough, as Keller cites, most people jot down 10 or 15 things in 10 or so minutes and then hit the wall. He mentioned that he gave it another shot and let his imagination kick in and view the verse without some words, exchanging similar words, and so on. That seemed to be when his listening kicked in and he absorbed the words. At pencils down 30 minutes, the instructor asked the group when the life changing thought occurred. The vast majority of the class said 25 minutes. Translation, the devices controlled by the self have to be exhausted to get to the God given revelation. That happens with prayer, time, and dedicated thought.
So I took the verse up top and did the exercise while waiting forever for the next doctors appointment in the MD Anderson hospital cafeteria and just as Keller predicted, the revelation came through late in the game once I had exhausted my brain’s stock of data about the verse and other related verses throughout the bible. I’ll spare you the common thoughts of what the words and metaphors in the verse mean as that is fairly straight-forward. As time is spent thinking about the verse, thematically, you might land as I did on trust being a key component but not being a word used. However, as I began to look at pieces of the verse, it began to speak.
It is interesting that when I look at the middle two line of the verse, the message gets more vague, but is still the same...trust God. Maybe it is not a shadow of death moment, but ultimately we should trust God. With a less than a shadow of the valley of death issue, can I still not fear or worry, or do I not give it up to Him so easy? Likewise, when I look at the first and last lines of the verse it seems more frightening since I am back with the shadow of the valley of death and it gets more vague, but the message is still the same...trust God. As I iterate through different combinations of lines, it can blur the clarity of the whole meaning of the verse, but the message of trust God remains the same.
So what happens when there is no trust, or potentially worse, partial trust? Maybe partial trust in a situation that we can seemingly work through on our own. The absence of trust ultimately results in worry and fear. Why? Big question. I think a simplified version of the answer might go something like this: Inherently, we all want to be in complete control of our lives and not have to give things up and trust something outside of our own control. Self reliance ultimately comes up short because the self is not perfect and offers too many flaws and ultimately devolves into worry, followed by fear as a result. An interesting thing about worry and why it is an endless cycle of wasted time. A wise friend of mine once said, "Worry is an illusion becasue it gives us the assurance that we are doing something constructive when it only furthers our anxiety and gives us a false sense of control." What happens after worry?...fear.
This verse only applies when we trust and our relationship with God is our top priority. Imagine if it said, yea I walk through the shadow of the valley of death, however I have the faculties to overcome fear on my own, and when it gets too dark for me, that is when I know that you are with me and keeping me on my path. At all other times, I am in control and do not need your rod or staff. Sounds a bit ludicrous doesn't it? Yet this is what we try to do in the name of being in control. Offensive to God? I would venture to guess, highly possible.
If I was not in my blessed plight with what is currently a ton of unknown, I have a feeling I would wrestle more with this and quickly run to things that I can control. Seemingly controllable things or primary reliance upon man made solutions might be appealing as the chief source of trust. Yet in my situation, the highest levels of doctors in the land still do not exactly know what it is, and we retest and rework so that they can figure it out. They remain perplexed that I am healthy as a horse (except for a big tumor and now some other atypical cells), mentally relaxed, and just want them to get to the bottom of it so that we can take some action, unless of course God steps in and physically heals me without their intervention. How funny would that be? We have no idea what you had, we have no idea how it healed, and we would all prefer to not associate with you because your case proves our inability to be omniscient. I don't necessarily wish that on them, but would have to chuckle at their expense, if and when it does happen.
Why walk through the shadow of the valley of death and not run? If the situation is bad, wouldn't it be preferable to hurry up and get through it if at all possible? I do not think so, and frankly I think in most cases, it just has to be God’s time. The reason being that it would rush lesson learning and God’s preparation for our next thing, limit perspective, and potentially create less of a lasting teaching from God. So I should marinade in my own misery to learn some lesson? Far from the truth...Due diligence and stewardship of our time and health is Godly. However, we may not always be able to shortcut plight. There are even times when it looks like God is going to swoop in and rescue us, only for us to be disappointed that we must continue to wait. I had one such instance happen in February when the biopsy and PET Scan said no cancer, but when we got to surgery day on 2/13/17, they had to abort because they found atypical cells and tested them as positive for non small cell lung cancer. I thought that I was out of the woods going into surgery, but alas here I sit a month later writing about still walking through the valley of the shadow of death.
Thankfully, while Kelly and I walk down the path deeper into the shadow of the valley of death, and we see death, fear, and destruction off in the surrounding distance waiting to attack us, the nearby surrounding area is full of God given light and life. At times the dark approaches the light we have been given, but it always fails to get us down for more than a short period because we rest in the faith God has given us, thanks to your prayers and our relationship with the Lord. One such example was that we arrived home from Houston Friday 3/10 evening to find that the reports from the day before that our dog Sunny was doing really bad, were in fact true. Sunny was 15 ½ and lived a great life as a great dog, but we had to put him down Friday night due to his body just shutting down in so many ways. Saying goodbye to a long time friend is never easy, but we celebrate his life and give thanks to God for such a great dog.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.