Notes from the Porch 8/12
August 12, 2008
Psalm 27
Today is the last day of treatment for my tumors and the preventive maintenance in the brain. Praise God that things have gone exceeding abundantly better than I could have asked or imagined. I came upon [to be honest I cheated and did two psalms today so I could use 27], one of my favorite psalms.
Psalm 27
“The Lord is my light and my salvation;
Whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the defense of my life;
Whom shall I dread?
When evildoers came upon me to devour my flesh,
My adversaries and my enemies, they stumbled and fell.
Though a host encamp against me,
My heart will not fear;
Though war rise up against me,
In spite of this I shall be confident.”
There is, of course, a big difference between knowing confidence and feeling confident. When a state trooper pulls up behind us we may know that we haven’t done anything wrong, but most of us are a bit jumpy until he or she passes us and moves on down the road. Confidence is a slippery slope experientially because we keep bumping into our fellow men and women, who will always fail us if we put our confidence in them rather than God. [Psalm 118:8]
We also have the blessing that, in trusting in God as completely as we can, men and women also turn out to be vessels of His grace. The Lord has delivered me, or so it seems at this time, from four deadly tumors in less than two months since diagnosis. Whom shall I fear? Lots of things to be honest but I am working on that everyday by being as honest as I can be with God and Barb and my close friends and praying for confidence.
I have spent amazingly little time with fear, my constant companion through life to this point. The more we have to trust God, better still the more we want to trust God, the more He can show His faithfulness. Verses 13-14: “I would have despaired unless I believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord. Be strong and let our heart take courage. Yes, wait for the Lord.”
It would be easy right now to wait for cancer rather than the Lord but we are determined not to do that. It is the doctors’ job to watch for recurrence. It is our job to watch for deliverance, not just from cancer but from fear and doubt and despair and our predisposition to look for earthly things to save us.
For those of you who have been in this with us, thank you so much for your prayers and encouragement and cards and food and gifts and especially the love of God, poured out through you in abundance in unimaginable ways. As we continue down this road we hope that you will stay with us. Waiting is not an easy thing for homo sapiens of the twenty-first century.