Gift of cancer

“I am thanking God for the gift of cancer.” In my case, it has been the gift that keeps on giving. There have been lots of emotions and reactions to that statement. Some folks have gasped, others stood speechless. One or two has seemed to marvel. Don’t marvel, folks, I put my pants on one leg at a time.


It is counterintuitive to say that cancer is a gift. Curse, yes! But gift? Never.

Now, just so you know, I would not have chosen cancer. This cancer journey has been perhaps the hardest thing I have ever faced, harder even than West Point, Army Ranger training, or serving as a church planter to start a new congregation with no money, no members, no land and not much help from the sponsoring congregation.

But today, I am thanking God for the cancer that He chose for me. I am thanking Him for the good things that have come into my life. I am still unclear as to why it took nearly six years to arrive at this point of radical acceptance. I have wrestled, complained, fretted, campaigned, sought control, and finally after a continual cancer “beat down”, I have given up and am accepting that I have had cancer, it has spread locally, it has not so far as we know metastasized to distant organs, but it has cost me precious time, pay, aggravation, pain, inconvenience, 10-12 lymph nodes and an ear. Today I am fine with all that.

I am no super-saint. I am not at any higher spiritual plane to be able to say things like this. I am merely a follower of Christ, walking by faith, leaning on my Savior day by day, getting grace from him for the challenges of each day. I am a believer in God’s sovereignty. I have always said “God is in control” but I have not always understood the implications of that statement. For some reason, God has seen fit to permit me to develop a life-threatening condition that is seeing a five-fold increase in America today. Melanoma has been on the rise. Why? Perhaps we baby boomers spent too much time in the sun without sunscreen? Who knows. The point for me is that if God is in control of my life, then for his own reasons, He has permitted this disease to come my way.

I also believe that God puts natural laws into action and allows them to run without divine interference, most of the time. I believe God has done, and will do, miracles in which He suspends natural laws, for reasons of His own. I believe the resurrection of Jesus Christ literally occurred. I believe that while at times God supernaturally and sovereignly heals people of disease, he does not always choose to do so. I also think God created the universe and put gravity and entropy into action. When natural laws like these two interact, sometimes mutations and aberrations can occur. Philosophically and perhaps biologically, I think diseases like cancer arise from this type of interaction.

Today, I am thanking God for this gift of cancer and for the gift it has become. More on that in the future…©2010 Ray Woolridge