Photo Source: Flickr Creative Commons by Art4TheGlryOfGod by Sharon https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/4thglryofgod\/<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>It seems that, no matter how bad a thing is, something good comes out of it somewhere. Consider, for an instant, my recent health problems.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nIt turns out that breast cancer is not good for your heart. I don\u2019t mean the emotional pain that having cancer inflicts. I\u2019m referring to your actual, physical heart; the tough little muscle that pumps blood and keeps you going from long before you\u2019re born until the moment you die.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThe heart is so essential to life in these bodies of ours that we have long defined death as the moment when the heart stops. No heartbeat? Then you\u2019re dead.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nLast November, as a sort of cherry on top of having cancer, I had a heart attack. As a result of the many, many, many, many, many tests I had to undergo, I learned that I have had a congenital heart defect since my little two-chambered embryo heart first began to beat.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThis heart defect, combined with the cancer effect has become what my husband calls my \u201ckill switch.\u201d It can \u2014 and sometimes dramatically threatens to do so \u2014 decide to stop my heart in one step. So far, I\u2019ve gotten out of these fun experiences alive, but each time it happens, it\u2019s a sobering reminder that life is fragile and precious.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nAnd that is one of the good things about having so many killer diseases going on at once, in particular, with walking around with an active kill switch. Life is far too precious to waste even a moment of it quarreling over stuff and nonsense. We \u2014 meaning, you, me, and everybody else \u2014 are too fragile, vulnerable, and yes, precious in the eyes of God to attack, demean, bully or hurt one another.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nI came out of the cancer considerably mellowed. For instance, I had been upset about some of the proposed changes in eligibility for receiving the Eucharist. That was, looking back with 20-20 hindsight, more than a little ridiculous of me, considering what I\u2019ve done and suffered in my life. I almost never take Communion without a feeling of my own unworthiness. It is sometimes difficult for me to raise my eyes to the altar.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nYet, when I got sick, I would go in the middle of the night and sit with Jesus in the Eucharist for hours. I didn\u2019t pray, at least not with words. I didn\u2019t even think all that much. I just wanted to be with Him, to float in His companionship.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nI\u2019ve never felt unworthy or alone with Jesus. My angst comes when I\u2019m with other people standing in front of Jesus. He never makes me feel unworthy. He never has. But other people? That\u2019s a different matter entirely.<\/p>\n
So what on Earth was I doing, making a big deal about letting damaged people come to him? Who did I think I was?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nCancer knocked that nonsense right out of me. If the Church wants to widen the gates and allow more people to approach Him, then who am I to question it, or try to keep them out?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThe same goes for people who are faced with trying to be their own spiritual counselors because they feel sure that no one in the Church will love them or accept them. There are so many people like that, you know. I encounter them every day.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nI try as much as I can, given my own sinful nature, to show them God\u2019s love through me. I give them as much understanding as my feeble comprehension will allow, and I let them be who they are in peace with me.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nOftentimes, this turns to trust, and that opens the door for me to tell them the simple truth that Jesus loves them so much. He loves them just exactly the way they are.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nNone of us has to change in any way for Jesus to love us. Nothing we can do can make Him love us any more or any less. His love is absolute, all-encompassing and forever. If we turn away from Him, He looks at us the way He did the rich young man \u2014 with love and sorrow.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nWe are free, absolutely free, to accept Jesus\u2019 love, or to reject it. We can go to Him or turn away from Him. And \u2014 this is important \u2014 we don\u2019t have to change and get holy to come to Him. We can accept His love while we are in the midst of our worst selves.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nJesus doesn\u2019t make us change what we do to come to Him. He takes us the way we are, and then, over time, He changes what we want to do. If you love the Lord, you will seek to follow Him, and if you love and follow Him, you will change. It\u2019s a natural action of on-going spiritual growth. It\u2019s conversion from the heart.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThis willingness of His to take us as we are is respect. It is respect for us as unique moral agents who have been given the innate knowledge of right and wrong and the freedom to chose.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nIt is also profound love. Jesus died for us, without demanding that we change. He went to hell for us, in our place, so that we could retain our freedom as moral agents. The cross was not the only way He could have redeemed us, but it was the only way He could have done it and left us free.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nGod respects us in a profound way. He has made us free, moral agents who get to choose, and He has paid an enormous price to both save us and allow us to remain free.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nWe can snarl, claw, bite and scratch one another, or we can support, love, accept and heal one another. It is our choice.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nWe can follow Christ and do what\u2019s right, or we can make false gods of our own vanities and walk away from Him. That, too, is our choice.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nAtheists often go on rants asking how a loving God can send so many people to hell. They then say that hell is just a made-up terror we Christians use to scare people into belief.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nBut hell is real. And God never sends anyone there. I know, without any doubt, that I deserve to go to hell. I also know, without any doubt, that I\u2019ve been given a pass for what I did.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t deserve a pass. I deserve to go to hell.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nBut Jesus literally went to hell in my place. He paid my tab. All I had to do was say \u201cyes\u201d and let Him pay it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nChristianity would be a good deal if that\u2019s all it was; just a tab-paying, get-out-of-hell-free deal. But that is, in reality, the tiniest bit of it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nIt\u2019s the love of Christ that makes the difference. The overwhelming, ecstatic love of the Holy Spirit, pouring into you, is an unforgettable and life-changing experience. God doesn\u2019t force us to change our lives to follow Him. He loves us into it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThe big blessing about first having cancer, and then having a heart attack, and now walking around with a kill switch is the knowledge that life is fragile. Being alive is not a given, not for any of us.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nYou don\u2019t need a kill switch to die in an instant. That happens to people of all ages and health conditions every day.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nBut all this illness and uncertainty has reset my priorities. Things that seemed important no longer are, and things that once scared me, no longer do. Conversely, things I tended to shove to the back of the line, have moved to the front.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nWe are at a pass in history, my friends. America is unraveling along seam lines of mutual distrust and hatred that were plumbed according to the shibboleths of the political heresy.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nYou and I can\u2019t change that. But we can change our own selves.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nStop attacking, defaming, hating other people. Treat them the way Jesus treats you.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nLove them. Open wide your arms to welcome them. If they walk away, look after them with love and sorrow, but stay ready to welcome them back if they change their minds.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThe Holy Spirit is calling them. Don\u2019t be surprised if, when you least expect it, they say \u201cyes\u201d to Him.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It seems that, no matter how bad a thing is, something good comes out of it somewhere. Consider, for an instant, my recent health problems.\u00a0 It turns out that breast cancer is not good for your heart. I don\u2019t mean the emotional pain that having cancer inflicts. I\u2019m referring to your actual, physical heart; the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1155,"featured_media":27800,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7839,1],"tags":[3998,8087,8016,8090,8093],"class_list":["post-32003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breast-cancer-2","category-uncategorized","tag-breast-cancer","tag-congenital-heart-defect","tag-heart-attack","tag-kill-switch","tag-loving-jesus"],"yoast_head":"\n
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