Cancer Blog #27
By Brian Zimmerman
Begun on July 31, 2021
Email: dyingman1@yahoo.com
My Dying Words
Entry #27
February 25, 2022
13 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.” 14 Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are [just] a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. 15 Instead, [you ought] to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that.” (James 4:13-15)
What a marvelous passage to give us back a true perspective on life. The biblical view of life is to try in one sense to get us to focus on today, and to stop worrying about tomorrow. I’m an inveterate worrier and focus a lot on various scenarios of future disasters, the vast majority of which will never materialize (the ones that do only confirm my worrying; on the other hand, the ones that are the worst are always the ones I didn’t foresee). Our lives are but a mist or fog James says, so stop stating so absolutely your plans (or worries) for tomorrow. “If the Lord wills…” As I said in my little paper on Healing, the first petition in the Lord’s Prayer is critical as it frames the rest of the petitions: “Your kingdom come, Your will be done.” Over all our petitions and plans and worries are God’s plan and sovereignty. They supersede whatever we plan or hope or fear. It is pointless to act as if our plans or worries are so certain; they aren’t. Only God’s plan is and that secret plan is not something we’re privy to (except in a very general way: guess what? Jesus returns and wins the war on evil and death. The end.)
Death as the final endpoint to our lives is just as certain and uncertain. It is certainly coming for us, but to believe that we know the day of our death is just as uncertain as to know what good or evil tomorrow will bring. Let me give an extended illustration. On February 11 (my 70th birthday this year (2022)), I had a CT scan to monitor my cancer. On February 18, my wife and I had an appointment with my oncologist for a scan review. What he told me gob smacked me as I was so completely unprepared for what he said. I had seen the radiologists’ interpretations: the gut radiologist said, in essence: all clear, no new organ or bone metastases. The lung radiologist said: some nodules remaining in the lungs, but no changes in size, other nodules have disappeared or have shrunk significantly. My lungs are extensively scarred by the cancer, and will never recover.
But, the oncologist had a very different view of the results. He drew a chart for me. It was an inverted hockey stick (I think it was a negative exponential curve), starting high on the Y axis, and as the line travelled along the x axis it curved quickly downward to the right near the bottom of the grapy (the x axis). The left side of the graph (Y axis) was the number of patients and the bottom was time in months. (Sorry, I know that’s not very clear, but I don’t know how to put that kind of graph in Word). He marked on the long handle of the line the 10 month mark (I was diagnosed with a terminal diagnosis last April (2021) and so February (2022) is the 10 month mark. The 10 month mark was well past the curve of the elbow of the hockey stick going to the right. He said that to get on the graph, you had to meet two criteria: you had to have esophageal cancer, and you had to be on my treatment protocol. I pointed out that there wasn’t much room at the bottom of the graph (as the line that was the hockey handle traveled to the right). He replied that that was because most of the patients at my time (10 months) were already dead. Okay, that will make you sit up and take notice. So, most people wouldn’t have my terminal diagnosis that I received last April, but the vast majority who did would be dead by now.
So, what does this illustration show? Exactly what James is teaching: I was working full time January through April 3 of 2021 until I became so short of breath that I had to stop working at all. I bought all of my wife’s Mother’s Day presents in those first few weeks of April because I didn’t think I would live to Mother’s Day (May 9, 2021). And yet, 10 months later, against the medical and my expectations, here I am, still alive. Who knew, except God, that that timeline was going to occur? My close friend intervened to get the best oncologist in town to set up my first oncology visit and PET scan to confirm the location of my primary tumor, and those literally saved my life. The elders of my church anointed and prayed over me for healing. I think that was the beginning of God’ extending my life. I took a vow asking God to extend my life to my 70th birthday, which coincidentally (meaning I had no idea of the importance) covered the critical period of survival for my cancer and its treatment. And, there were so many prayers from former classmates, coworkers, old friends, and especially members of my church family. Then, God granted my vow request (which my wife and I are preparing to repay shortly) (I discuss all this in my paper on Healing).
Take my word for it: James is right, preface all that you plan or fear with: “If the Lord wills,” whether verbally or in your heart and mind. Your life and death are in God’s hands, and you need have no fear if you are a disciple of Christ. He is in control of all things, and you are safe in His sovereignty.
Next: The acceptance of death and forgiveness of those who are its cause