Appreciating Differences

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I’ve recently met again with Nate’s cancer doctor, Dr. Ross Abrams. In the last two years he’s graciously agreed to meet every few months, 5 times in all since Nate died. Each time we’ve had an interesting and challenging conversation in his hospital office.

This time, as I approached the Rush University Medical Center where Nate and I first learned of his terminal cancer, it was hard not to let my feelings wander. I knew if they did, they’d head toward melancholy, since every hospital memory, including 14 radiation treatments and multiple scans, was tainted with the disease that ended in death.

But I found myself once again in the radiation department surrounded by cancer patients, grateful for the sensitive, expert treatment Nate received when we were there. Dr. Abrams had much to do with that.

Although he and I are about the same age, we have little in common. His strengths are in medicine, and I generally avoid doctor’s offices. He’s methodical and deep, while I’m slapdash and flighty. Most significantly, Dr. Abrams is an Orthodox Jew and I am a Christian. One of his sons is a rabbi, and several of mine have been on missions for Christ. Yet two years after we first met under the stressful conditions of stage 4 cancer, we’ve become friends, because we’ve found some common ground on which to meet.

In the beginning it was all about his patient, my husband. We had a shared concern for Nate’s best welfare and tried to get him through his vicious cancer without being overwhelmed by suffering, though we both knew his disease would eventually conquer. Dr. Abrams remembers Nate as a strong, courageous man who endured suffering bravely. This means a great deal to me, and I’ve appreciated him telling me that.

The doctor and I have also shared common ground in enjoying our big families, and I’ve become acquainted with his wife and children through the line-up of 8” x 10” photographs on his office shelves. He’s winning at the grandchildren game, though, his 10 to my almost-6. But as he says, “It’s not a competition.”

We’ve also shared common ground in our love of Scripture, and both of us relate to God the Father as his children, although in different ways. As we participate in our conversations, I often wonder what God is thinking about the two of us. Both of us trace our start to Adam and Eve, and because they were both made in God’s image, Dr. Abrams and I were, too. In this we are the same.

Both of us are also recipients of God’s love. The Father does, I believe, desire to forgive us both from personal sin and restore us to himself, when sin causes us to break fellowship with him.

I look forward to our future conversations, particularly as they relate to faith matters, and know God has specific things in mind to teach both of us through our friendship.

”Though he brings grief, he will show compassion, so great is his unfailing love.” (Lamentations 3:32)

Loving the List

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Getting older equates to less mental recall and more written lists. Anne Ortlund used to say, “When you write it down, it clears out your head,” implying limited thinking capacity but unlimited pen and ink.

I’m with Anne.

My prayer list is particularly long, which may or may not have freed up mind-space, but I defiinitely need that list. And once someone’s name goes on it, there’s only one reason to take it off: no more requests.

I remember the first time it occurred to me Nate no longer needed prayer. Being my husband, he was #1 on the list and factored heavily into my conversations with God. What a funny feeling to see his name there and realize my praying for him was done. Every request had either been answered or was no longer necessary.

When someone dies, their need for our prayer evaporates, but that’s not all that disappears. We can no longer claim biblical promises for that one or request salvation for a person who didn’t know. Opportunities to tell our faith story or testify of God’s work in our lives also end. Although death brings a conclusion to disease and pain, it also terminates our chances to stand in the gap for someone else.

Tending to a prayer list is a golden opportunity to do a good deed for another, and Scripture has much to say about good deeds. They can be offered to God for his use, and sometimes he even lets us take part in his supernatural work of answering prayer requests. Praying through a prayer list is the most powerful gift we can give to anyone, whether the people know we’re praying or not.

This weekend our area endured 48 hours of the most impressive winds I’d ever experienced. Sixty mph gales toppled trees and twisted massive branches to the ground. Sticks were rammed into windshield wipers and tire rims. As I listened to endless debris hitting our windows and roof, one especially large limb landed with such force it shook the whole house, causing even Jack to jump from out of a sound sleep.

Lying in bed that night with the electricity out and winds clawing at the house, I thought of God’s power to abort any storm. Jesus could have stepped onto my front porch and whispered, “Wind, that’s enough,” and it would have stopped like a spinning kite hitting the ground. That same magnificent power is exactly what’s behind our prayer lists, provided we pray over them.

Though Nate’s name has been removed from my list, many others are still there including you, blog reader. And until God stills the storms of earthly life, both literally and figuratively, he’ll make himself and his 60 mph power available to all of us… through prayer.

“When you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind.” (James 1:6)

Spiders on the Web

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Every generation considers itself sharper than the one before. Since I see 3 generations coming behind me, I assume I’m “getting it” less and less. There’s one area where that’s indisputably true: the World Wide Web.

Recently three of my boys tried to explain to Mary and me what happens when someone researches a topic through Google. The two of us had initiated the discussion with questions about how the impossible occurs each time we Google anything. Literally millions of sites jump to the screen in seconds, and we wanted to know how.

The boys began describing the technical reasons behind this phenomenon, explaining why it wasn’t “the impossible” but was quite understandable. We asked question after question, but their answers were beyond our grasp. No matter how they tried to simplify it, we still couldn’t get it.

Mary said, “But who typed in all that information? Somewhere, at some time, someone had to put all those facts on the web.” The boys threw back their heads and laughed with gusto while Mary and I looked at each other’s blank faces and thought, “What’s funny about that?”

It was as if our two groups were talking different topics. Maybe we were. Adam patiently described the spiders that crawl around the web collecting data in a category requested through Google, completing their task in milliseconds, another nonsensical concept.

“Spiders?” we said. Mary and I are fully acquainted with real spiders in the real world, but these imaginary ones didn’t compute. But then, because the information they collect is real, they must somehow be real, too. It was mindboggling, and I’m fairly sure smoke began seeping from our ears at that point.

The root problem is that Mary and I think differently than the generation beneath us. It’s like pointing to a tree and asking what kind it is. One group might say, “A tree with red leaves,” the other, “Deciduous.”

I thought of the parallel between generational confusion and the confusion we sometimes feel in trying to understand God. In our bewilderment we ask him questions and he uses his Word to answer, but more often than not, we still don’t get it.

Sometimes we’re incapable of figuring it out, sometimes just off topic. We might be asking, “Lord, which retirement center should I choose?” while he’s answering, “My grace is sufficient for you.”

Much like Mary and me peppering the boys with sidebar questions, all of us are guilty of asking God the wrong questions, too, focusing on our expected answers rather than trying to understand his new ones. When God says something that seems off topic to us, we just repeat our question.

God does offer one answer, though, that answers every question, in every situation, both those we understand and those that confuse us:

“Just trust me.”

And because he’s God, we get that, no matter what generation we’re from.

“What they trust in is fragile; what they rely on is a spider’s web.” (Job 8:14)