Construction + Cancer + COVID = Considerable Consternation
Corey Nieman / Caring Network Director and Spiritual Formation Ministry Assistant
Well first off, our God does not respond to lukewarm faith, so why would He treat us any differently (Revelation 3: 15-16). He is always burning with desire for us to come to know Him, we just don’t always give Him our priority. It takes something like this to get us fully woken up. At this juncture in our family’s life we had a choice of fight or flight. Depending on how we chose to interact with this pain determines if we suffer well or misspend our suffering. We made a choice as a family to suffer well through this journey. What this means is inviting Jesus into the center of this pain and asking for His perspective.
All of these factors had layers of anxiety, disbelief, and confusion attached to very powerful truths. We are not in control, we are not appreciative enough, we need to spend more time being and less time doing. For some, this collision of lies and truth would induce flight (drugs, alcohol, gambling, an affair) or worse yet fight (seeing myself or God as the enemy). The enemy would favor those responses, as opposed to intentionally, soberly, prayerfully, abiding in Christ. Fight or flight can be healthy if we channel it well. We must fight our flesh and flee from sin. We must submit to support, not hide nor isolate. We must follow in His footsteps so we can avoid the greater pitfalls and perils.
In doing so, we have experienced peculiar blessings and peace (Philippians 4:7) in the midst of these potentially life-changing events. I cannot say how this journey will end. But we know God orchestrated all of this for our betterment. Plus, all the prayers and support we have received thus far keep us hovering above our circumstances. If we all choose to suffer well, as Jesus did, hopefully on the other side we will have a greater appreciation for our God, our community, and our country.
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| Photo by Andreas Selter on Unsplash |
If you had asked us six months ago to prepare for moving into a house that was supposed to take 90 days to renovate, but actually took 182 days (within which our subcontractor quit and threatened to sue us at day 90, while enduring windstorms and power outages), a broken toe as soon as we moved in, followed by our son’s collapsed lung and an out-of-the-blue cancer diagnosis, followed by the COVID outbreak in the States ... I think in knowing all that, we might have lost all hope and I would have jumped ship from my life. Why didn’t God prepare us? We went from the top of the mountain in buying our new house, involved in multiple ministries, two baptisms, a mission trip, and everyone in seemingly perfect health … straight to the bottom of the valley of the shadow.
Well first off, our God does not respond to lukewarm faith, so why would He treat us any differently (Revelation 3: 15-16). He is always burning with desire for us to come to know Him, we just don’t always give Him our priority. It takes something like this to get us fully woken up. At this juncture in our family’s life we had a choice of fight or flight. Depending on how we chose to interact with this pain determines if we suffer well or misspend our suffering. We made a choice as a family to suffer well through this journey. What this means is inviting Jesus into the center of this pain and asking for His perspective.
All of these factors had layers of anxiety, disbelief, and confusion attached to very powerful truths. We are not in control, we are not appreciative enough, we need to spend more time being and less time doing. For some, this collision of lies and truth would induce flight (drugs, alcohol, gambling, an affair) or worse yet fight (seeing myself or God as the enemy). The enemy would favor those responses, as opposed to intentionally, soberly, prayerfully, abiding in Christ. Fight or flight can be healthy if we channel it well. We must fight our flesh and flee from sin. We must submit to support, not hide nor isolate. We must follow in His footsteps so we can avoid the greater pitfalls and perils.
In doing so, we have experienced peculiar blessings and peace (Philippians 4:7) in the midst of these potentially life-changing events. I cannot say how this journey will end. But we know God orchestrated all of this for our betterment. Plus, all the prayers and support we have received thus far keep us hovering above our circumstances. If we all choose to suffer well, as Jesus did, hopefully on the other side we will have a greater appreciation for our God, our community, and our country.