Life is Good on this Journey

Is it wrong to desire what you know to be good? Isn’t life precious and good? Is that not what we are to cherish, respect, and fight for?

For several weeks now we’ve been quietly praying a familiar prayer. We’re asking God to heal Arwen of her cancer and restore her eleven-year-old body to health. Yet our prayers somehow feel more cautious than before, as if we find ourselves holding our breath: daring to hope…fearing doubt. Arwen has had two cycles of her experimental treatment now. Certainly, she’s been through a lot of treatments over the past year and a half. She’s had dozens of CT scans, MIBG scans, MRIs, bone marrow biopsies, not to mention hundreds of pokes and labs. This week, she had all those scans again, but this is the first series of test after starting this new treatment. With all those previous treatments and scans and tests, we’ve not ever had good news. Nothing had worked. We were out of options. Now we’re checking to see, for the first time, if this untested therapy might prove effective when all else has failed.

We know what we want from God in this situation. We want a good thing to happen. Our hearts ache to receive good news. We’re asking for health and healing and life for our daughter. These aren’t wrong desires. Matthew 7:11 describes God as a father who gives good things to His children. We believe it’s true. Yet this truth is not in contradiction to the rest of God’s truth. I personally have momentary lapses in my prayers where I’m tempted to tell God that my worship for him will be profound if he would grant me my wish or that he would surely be glorified by so many if he would display His power in the way that I see fit. Oh, but who are we to bargain with God? Before his death, Jesus prayed making known to the Father his fervent request, but he also took on the attitude of obedience and surrender, “not my will but yours be done.” We must not presume to elevate ourselves above the humble posture of obedience that Christ so perfectly modeled. We must lay our will down upon the alter of sacrifice while still worshiping the Lord with our whole selves. He will be glorified, and he will accomplish his glorification according to his own wisdom. Whatever may come, we prostrate ourselves before God in humble worship and thanksgiving.

Life is precious. Life is good and worth preserving and fighting for and praying for. The reason life is precious and good is because it is God who created life and he who gave it to us. He has given us all good things and we have no claim upon anything without His sanction. We lay our mortal lives down at his feet along with our desires - His will to be done.

Here we wait. With resolve, we present our need to God, surrendering our will to him in obedience. Trusting him and his perfect wisdom, we praise and worship him no matter the outcome of any circumstance. We choose to joyfully thank him in all things, and we wait. We wait for test results, but more than that, we wait expectantly to see how God will be glorified - he will be glorified. Praise God that he has willed to give us life abundantly. God is good.


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