As some of you may have heard, commentator and broadcaster Tony Snow has recently passed away. About a year ago he wrote a kind of testimony that I found both touching and insightful and I wanted to share it with anyone who happens to feel like a lot of reading. I don't know much of anything about the man, but this particular piece of his writing really struck me as a good model for my own outlook in life. So, without further ado, here is the testimony as it appeared in Christianity Today in July of 2007.
Cancer's Unexpected Blessings
When you enter the Valley of the Shadow of Death, things change.
Blessings arrive in unexpected packages—in my case, cancer. Those
of us with potentially fatal diseases—and there are millions in America
today—find ourselves in the odd position of coping with our mortality
while trying to fathom God's will. Although it would be the height of
presumption to declare with confidence What It All Means, Scripture
provides powerful hints and consolations. The first is that we shouldn't spend too much time trying to answer the why questions: Why me? Why must people suffer? Why can't someone else get sick?
We can't answer such things, and the questions themselves often are
designed more to express our anguish than to solicit an answer. I
don't know why I have cancer, and I don't much care. It is what it is—a
plain and indisputable fact. Yet even while staring into a mirror
darkly, great and stunning truths begin to take shape. Our maladies
define a central feature of our existence: We are fallen. We are
imperfect. Our bodies give out. But despite
this—because of it—God offers the possibility of salvation and grace.
We don't know how the narrative of our lives will end, but we get to
choose how to use the interval between now and the moment we meet our
Creator face-to-face. Second, we need to get past
the anxiety. The mere thought of dying can send adrenaline flooding
through your system. A dizzy, unfocused panic seizes you. Your heart
thumps; your head swims. You think of nothingness and swoon. You fear
partings; you worry about the impact on family and friends. You fidget
and get nowhere. To regain footing, remember that we
were born not into death, but into life—and that the journey continues
after we have finished our days on this earth. We accept this on faith,
but that faith is nourished by a conviction that stirs even within many
nonbelieving hearts—an intuition that the gift of life, once given,
cannot be taken away. Those who have been stricken enjoy the special
privilege of being able to fight with their might, main, and faith to
live—fully, richly, exuberantly—no matter how their days may be
numbered. Third, we can open our eyes and hearts.
God relishes surprise. We want lives of simple, predictable
ease—smooth, even trails as far as the eye can see—but God likes to go
off-road. He provokes us with twists and turns. He places us in
predicaments that seem to defy our endurance and comprehension—and yet
don't. By his love and grace, we persevere. The challenges that make
our hearts leap and stomachs churn invariably strengthen our faith and
grant measures of wisdom and joy we would not experience otherwise. 'You Have Been Called'
Picture
yourself in a hospital bed. The fog of anesthesia has begun to wear
away. A doctor stands at your feet; a loved one holds your hand at the
side. "It's cancer," the healer announces. The
natural reaction is to turn to God and ask him to serve as a cosmic
Santa. "Dear God, make it all go away. Make everything simpler." But
another voice whispers: "You have been called." Your quandary has drawn
you closer to God, closer to those you love, closer to the issues that
matter—and has dragged into insignificance the banal concerns that
occupy our "normal time." There's another kind of response, although usually
short-lived—an inexplicable shudder of excitement, as if a clarifying
moment of calamity has swept away everything trivial and tinny, and
placed before us the challenge of important questions. The
moment you enter the Valley of the Shadow of Death, things change. You
discover that Christianity is not something doughy, passive, pious, and
soft. Faith may be the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of
things not seen. But it also draws you into a world shorn of fearful
caution. The life of belief teems with thrills, boldness, danger,
shocks, reversals, triumphs, and epiphanies. Think of Paul, traipsing
though the known world and contemplating trips to what must have seemed
the antipodes (Spain), shaking the dust from his sandals, worrying not
about the morrow, but only about the moment. There's
nothing wilder than a life of humble virtue—for it is through
selflessness and service that God wrings from our bodies and spirits
the most we ever could give, the most we ever could offer, and the most
we ever could do. Finally, we can let love change
everything. When Jesus was faced with the prospect of crucifixion, he
grieved not for himself, but for us. He cried for Jerusalem before
entering the holy city. From the Cross, he took on the cumulative
burden of human sin and weakness, and begged for forgiveness on our
behalf. We get repeated chances to learn that life
is not about us—that we acquire purpose and satisfaction by sharing in
God's love for others. Sickness gets us partway there. It reminds us of
our limitations and dependence. But it also gives us a chance to serve
the healthy. A minister friend of mine observes that people suffering
grave afflictions often acquire the faith of two people, while loved
ones accept the burden of two people's worries and fears. Learning How to Live
Most
of us have watched friends as they drifted toward God's arms not with
resignation, but with peace and hope. In so doing, they have taught us
not how to die, but how to live. They have emulated Christ by
transmitting the power and authority of love. I sat
by my best friend's bedside a few years ago as a wasting cancer took
him away. He kept at his table a worn Bible and a 1928 edition of the
Book of Common Prayer. A shattering grief disabled his family, many of
his old friends, and at least one priest. Here was a humble and very
good guy, someone who apologized when he winced with pain because he
thought it made his guest uncomfortable. He retained his equanimity and
good humor literally until his last conscious moment. "I'm going to try
to beat [this cancer]," he told me several months before he died. "But
if I don't, I'll see you on the other side." His
gift was to remind everyone around him that even though God doesn't
promise us tomorrow, he does promise us eternity—filled with life and
love we cannot comprehend—and that one can in the throes of sickness
point the rest of us toward timeless truths that will help us weather
future storms. Through such trials, God bids us to
choose: Do we believe, or do we not? Will we be bold enough to love,
daring enough to serve, humble enough to submit, and strong enough to
acknowledge our limitations? Can we surrender our concern in things
that don't matter so that we might devote our remaining days to things
that do? When our faith flags, he throws reminders in our way.
Think of the prayer warriors in our midst. They change things, and
those of us who have been on the receiving end of their petitions and
intercessions know it. It is hard to describe, but
there are times when suddenly the hairs on the back of your neck stand
up, and you feel a surge of the Spirit. Somehow you just know: Others
have chosen, when talking to the Author of all creation, to lift us
up—to speak of us! This is love of a very special
order. But so is the ability to sit back and appreciate the wonder of
every created thing. The mere thought of death somehow makes every
blessing vivid, every happiness more luminous and intense. We may not
know how our contest with sickness will end, but we have felt the
ineluctable touch of God. What is man that Thou art mindful of him?
We don't know much, but we know this: No matter where we are, no matter
what we do, no matter how bleak or frightening our prospects, each and
every one of us, each and every day, lies in the same safe and
impregnable place—in the hollow of God's hand.
| 
