What God Taught Me Through My Wife's Cancer...Continued from page 3

Love Multiplies.

If you draw a circle around everything the apostle Paul says in Ephesians 5, that circle provides strength for life and that circle answers the key to walking through the darkness with God’s light as the primary resource: Walk in love (Eph. 5:2). The source for Light is God’s love. His love graces us to give thanks for blessings even in the midst of suffering (Eph. 5:4). His love cleanses us when sin darkens the heart (I John 1:1-9). His love produces fruitfulness in the daunting challenges of life. His love compels us to walk in wisdom and redeem the time (Eph. 5:15).

Time crawled for days during in the hospital. Now, two years later, time marches: preparing sermons, raising the kids, running to Wal Mart where ? during the month of October ? yogurt labels will remind me that is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, paying the bills, balancing the check book, folding the laundry, raking the leaves, and changing the oil in the car. Ordinary time with its daily tasks march like soldiers preparing for battle. Time mercilessly and joyfully fills our days

Tennyson in one of his poems has a line that speaks of “life piled on to life.” Cancer has been life piled on to life. You cannot turn back time or put a leaf back on a tree or make a river run backwards or force the ticking, ticking, ticking of time to silence. Paul’s Christian world view of time piled upon time invites us to live life to the fullest by buying back time, valuing time, redeeming the time, celebrating time, enjoying time with the people we love.

Patches of darkness piled life upon life almost two years ago. Remarkably, though, a light shined. Love surrounded. The saints rallied with love to the cause. And all is well. All is well. It is well with my soul, because the Light was Christ; the Light is Christ.

What have I learned about God through my wife’s cancer? I have learned that love multiplies, deepens and never fails. I have learned that God supplies light in the darkness; strength for the journey; joy in the sadness of unexpected events; and an anchor of hope in the soul in the uncertainty of life piled upon life.

George Mueller of Bristol says, “Faith begins where man’s power ends.” I have learned that I can go to God when circumstances are beyond my control. I have learned in faith to let others minister to me and my family when I need ministry. I have learned in faith to walk the darkness but cling to the Light.

Several years ago in Cambridge, England I attended church at the Eden Baptist Church. Like a good Baptist I sat on the back row of the church. I met a man by the name of Dr. Roger Carpenter, a teacher at Gonville and Caius Medical College in Cambridge. He invited me to eat with the fellows on Wednesday. Before we ate with Cambridge’s finest scholars, steak pie and English peas and potatoes, he gave me a brief tour of King’s College and the grounds, library (over 33,000 volumes), and courtyard of Gonville and Caius.

As he led me through corridors, into the basement of King’s College, and into historic buildings, he kept reminding me that he was taking me places I could not go without his assistance. His swipe card, digitally programmed, kept giving us “access.” Paul says that faith triumphs in times of trouble: “Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand and rejoice in the hope of the glory of God” (Rom. 5:1-2).

I learned in new way about access to God’s light in the shadows of darkness. I have learned that access to God lights a way in the suffering of darkness. In the Lord’s presence, before His throne, I have learned that C.S. Lewis was right: even in suffering God is good. Oh, how good He is!

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John Duncan is Pastor of Lakeside Baptist Church in Granbury, TX.