Pink ribbons are everywhere, stirring our awareness and reminding us of the realities of breast cancer. And while the focus is on breast cancer, the truth is that cancer in any form disrupts life.
A few years ago, my dad was feeling badly. By Christmas, he wasn’t himself and he didn’t look so good. Within weeks, my sister delivered the news: “Daddy has cancer.”
As bad news washed over me this is the only thought I could think:
God is still God.
That sentence—my gut level response to cancer’s grand disruption of life—saturated my mind. Perhaps deep down I wanted to freak out but instead of tears or overwhelming worry, I just kept thinking, God is still God.
That sentence was my lifeline.
The very worst thing I can imagine is that one day I wake up and God isn’t there, He isn’t in charge, and I’m left to myself to figure out life.
I’m thankful that my worst-case scenario is an impossibility. Immanuel, God with us, must live up to His name.
In the face of uncertainty, He is what we can be sure of.
That’s all we’ve got folks.
God.
God, who does not abandon us.
God, who is never disrupted but is sovereign in all things.
God, who is with us.
God, who is still God on our darkest days.
Here’s what He says: “I will lead the blind by ways they have not known, along unfamiliar paths I will guide them; I will turn the darkness into light before them and make the rough places smooth. These are the things I will do; I will not forsake them.” Isaiah 42:16.
I am grateful for that moment—that four-word life-sustaining sentence that the Holy Spirit planted in my mind on a day when cancer disrupted my life.
What have you learned from an experience with cancer? Is there a scripture that gave you courage or comforted you?
Amy Jacobs is a marketing strategist for the magazine and young adult ministries of Lifeway. In her spare time, she blogs at Gather and Build.
