Category Archives: Hearing from God

Teacher of the Year

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Back to schoolGod is always teaching us. If we’re eager for it, he’ll show us all kinds of things. If we’re ambivalent or worse yet, antagonistic, he’ll still show us all kinds of things. Either way, he’s going to teach. It’s just that if we want to learn, it’s going to be pleasant. If not, getting educated will be difficult.

Any way we look at it, God is Teacher of the Year, the Decade, the Century, and of all time. He’s got eternity covered, too. Problems result only on the student side, and we can certainly be stubborn pupils, especially when the lessons are advanced.

One subject in our Teacher’s curriculum is so difficult, it’s included in his curriculum every year. It’s based on a question: why doesn’t he always say “yes” to our prayers?

For instance, if a friend is injured in an accident after we’ve prayed for safety, we might need a refresher course entitled, “Our God Hears.” When we learn of children being harmed, we might need new instruction in a class called, “Our God Sees.” If a family member gets cancer as Mary has, we might need to re-register for, “Our God Heals.”

Let’s face it. No matter how many lessons we’ve learned in God’s school, once in a while we raise our hand and say, “Is this injury/damage/disease absolutely necessary?”

Though he has the answer, he’s not required to give it. Sometimes, though, he does. For example, this morning in my small prayer group, we were preparing to pray over 12 long lists of names, each one representing difficulty and sadness.

As we spread our requests on the table in front of us, the 200+ needs sometimes threaten to overwhelm us. We can feel like our Teacher is “failing to answer” our prayer-questions. Where are the yeses?

Today he used one of his student teachers to deliver our lesson. Compound interestAbigail said, “I like to think that as we pray, it’s like putting money in God’s bank. He hears us each time we plead for answers and is quietly working on our requests much like a savings account is changing, based on compounding interest. The prayer/account grows and grows until the day God reveals everything he’d been doing all along, and just like with compound interest, his answers are far larger than what we expected!”

Caa–ching!

So, today’s lesson in God’s School of Understanding used a banking metaphor to teach us why we should keep praying, even when answers aren’t forthcoming. We knew he had a classroom, but who knew he had a bank, too?

“If you are walking in darkness, without a ray of light, trust in the Lord and rely on your God.” (Isa. 50:10)

Praising and Praying with Mary

  1. Pray that her new nausea would respond to meds
  2. Praise that there are stronger meds, if these don’t work
  3. Pray for energy to continue wedding planning
  4. Praise for friends who never stop praying and encouraging her

Determined

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Keeping company with a toddler is a special delight. Just watching what he or she is doing is entertainment that never gets boring.

photo(6)Today the thermometer reached 86 degrees here in southwest Michigan, and we took advantage by spending lots of time outdoors. When I turned on the hose for Emerald, she became highly animated, even though it was just a trickle. “Wa-wa!” she shouted, using one of her new words. “Wa-wa! Wa-wa!”

I handed her a couple of buckets, a shovel, and a few rubber duckies, and she was off on a happy adventure. Pulling up a beach chair, I watched her play, a witness to her new discoveries with a hose and its wa-wa.

photo(9)Every so often joy would bubble up out of her and she’d start again: “Wa-wa! Wa-wa!” The simple pleasure of wetting the driveway and filling containers kept her busy for half an hour, a record for one-project-focus. Each time the hose inadvertently doused her, she would gasp with the cold but then continue on with her work, undaunted.

Emerald’s determination reminded me of my sister Mary’s. The lady isn’t having nearly as much fun as the baby, but she’s every bit as determined to stick with her project. Today she endured her first-ever chemotherapy. Not knowing what to expect, she and Bervin arrived early to be sure there was time for the blood draw, the hour needed for the results, the anti-nausea medicine, the half-hour needed for it to work, the process of establishing the IV line, and the 30 minute infusion itself.

They needn’t have worried. The waiting room was jammed, and the two hour process took an excruciating 6 hours. It was wait, wait, wait.

Determination is tested in circumstances like that. Though Mary said she wasn’t nervous about the actual infusion, she confessed to moments of doubt and fear during the wait. “Maybe chemo wasn’t the right choice. Maybe it won’t make that much difference. Look at this waiting room full of broken people, all of whom are suffering the torturous effects of chemo. Am I really becoming one of them?”

She said her tears took her by surprise, but maybe it was just the torture of having to wait so long to do something she didn’t really want to do.

???????????????????????????????Eventually her turn came, and her determination was kept strong by a quote she remembered from Erwin Lutzer describing what to do when feeling overwhelmed. “Glance at the lion, but gaze at the Lamb.” His reference was to Satan’s practice of pouncing on us to devour (as the lion), while Jesus (the Lamb) rescues, to set us free.

Mary determined to give only a quick glance at chemo while gazing at God as her Sustainer from the beginning.“There are still question marks over my future,” she said, “but I left the hospital thinking, ‘One down. Seventeen to go.’ And I’m determined to make it.”

“Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report…. think on these things.” (Philippians 4:8)

Praising and Praying with Mary

  1. Praise for no side effects yet. Pray against nausea.
  2. Pray for hemoglobin count to stay in normal range so transfusions aren’t necessary
  3. Praise for Bervin’s determination to partner with his wife

In the Classroom

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Mary has learned, as many of us have, that a health crisis can be the best of teachers. In her case, the instructor’s name is “CANCER” and the lesson plan is “WISDOM”.

mobile phoneTonight Mary and I shared a rich conversation on the phone. As always, I had pen and paper handy, ready to write down her prayer requests for tonight’s blog. But by the time we said goodbye, I’d taken two pages of notes. Her insights (below) poured forth without stopping, complete with appropriate Scriptures to back them up. I wish I’d had a recorder!

 

Here’s some of what she said:

  1. Doctors work with statistics, and God works with hearts.
  2. Good endings can come from bad beginnings.
  3. Irregular days cause us to value regular ones.
  4. Taking one day at a time isn’t just a cliché but a good philosophy.
  5. When God doesn’t withdraw a crisis, he partners with us through it.
  6. Future plans must be held loosely.
  7. Hospitals and doctor’s offices are great places to plant seeds of hope in hopeless people.
  8. No matter how serious the crisis, there’s always something to praise God for.

She revealed her new heart as she talked about #6 above, describing her changed point of view. “I used to think if I wrote something on my calendar, it was a definite. Whatever it said, would get done. Once cancer hit, I had to back away from all kinds of obligations I had been sure I was going to keep.”

ContentShe went on. “Now when I write something on the calendar, I can’t be sure it’ll happen. It’s all up to God. If I can meet my commitments, it will be because he willed it that way. If I can’t, it’s also because he willed it. It’s all up to him.”

We talked about the Scripture passage in James that says something like this: “Don’t say, ‘Today or tomorrow we’ll go here or there’ when you don’t know what tomorrow will bring. Instead you should say, ‘If it’s the Lord’s will, we’ll do this or that’.” (4:13-15)

She explained how she “gets that” now in a way she never had before and wants to hold everything loosely in the future. Applying it to her choice of hospital and chemotherapy team, any of the 3 would have been fine, she said, because wherever she landed, God would still be in charge. “So the choice was really between good, good, and good.”

She and Bervin chose the University of Chicago Hospital, and whatever is accomplished there will be because God accomplishes it through the chemo team. Such thinking lifts what could have been a heavy burden before going into treatment, which will begin on May 12, and last for 6 months.

I loved being in Mary’s cancer-classroom tonight, listening to all she’s learned. And as incongruous as it may seem, because of her cancer, she’s better than ever.

“The things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.” (2 Corinthians 4:18)

Praising and Praying with Mary

  1. Praise for the chemo decision having been made
  2. Praise for a “regular” day, participating at the Mom-to-Mom Ministry at church
  3. Pray that God will guard my heart when I can’t sleep and fears try to creep back in