Today is April 7, Good Friday, and by providence or ecclesiastical calculations it is a double anniversary for me.  On April 7, 2003, I received a cancer diagnosis, and on Good Friday, 2003, I underwent surgery for that cancer. Twenty years. The cancer was serious, so serious that the doctor would not allow me to leave the office until I had scheduled surgery. The first available date was 11 days later on April 18, Good Friday. They said they could just as well schedule me for the following Monday, but I said I thought Good Friday would be a good day for surgery.

The surgery went well and was followed by chemotherapy. Twenty years later, I am a long-term cancer survivor.

This week I have been thinking about twenty years ago – I rarely think about that April of 2003 any longer, so having it come to mind twenty years later may be a good thing, for it was a time of grace.

Like many who receive a tough diagnosis, when Becky and I got home from the doctor’s office, I checked my life insurance policy and thought about how a funeral might go. I scoured the internet for all the information I could find about my form of cancer, and bookmarked those sites that listed better survival odds. I leaned hard on Becky and she never lost balance nor did she let her feet slip.

For many months after April 7, 2003, I went to bed and I woke up with the reality of cancer the first thing in my mind. Chemo was hard, but not as hard as it is for many. I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing fifteen months later when I realized I felt good for the first time in a long time. Appropriately, the place was a fazenda in Brazil called Boa Esperanza, Portuguese for Good Hope. I was out for a run on the red clay roads around Florestal.

And, yes, my time with cancer was a time of grace, God’s grace. For sure, God gave grace through the love of Becky and our children, good friends and kind neighbors. But there was also an inner grace of God’s assurance and hope.

Five days before surgery, I preached the Palm Sunday text from Luke with Jesus’ statement about the very stones crying out. The companion text was from 1 Samuel 7 about a battle with the Philistines and Samuel commemorating the victory of God’s people. “Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Jeshanah and named it Ebenezer, for he said, ‘Thus far the Lord has helped us.’” We sang Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing – “Here I raise my Ebenezer, hither by Thy help I come.”

I found a big hunk of an Ohio River rock and named it my Ebenezer. My Ebenezer sits on a bookshelf in my study to this day.

As memories from twenty years ago – and there are many – have flooded my mind this week, none is more important than the memory of a moment after diagnosis and before surgery when I was overwhelmed with a sense of God’s assuring love – not so much that I would survive a cancer scare, but that come what may his love abides. It was as if I was staring into the abyss and a voice told me there was nothing to fear. “The eternal God is your dwelling place, and underneath are the everlasting arms,” Moses told the people before his death.

Cancer was a time of grace.

Easter does not mark an end to suffering or, yet, of death. But by the same Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead, we are assured of future hope – resurrection in and through Christ – and his promised presence in all things.

Cancer brought an assuring grace. Thanks be to God.

Thomas Brooks was a Puritan preacher who wrote about God’s grace in times of affliction.  These words are from Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices, written in 1652:

Ah, Christians! has not God by all afflictions lifted up your souls nearer heaven, as Noah’s ark was lifted up nearer and nearer heaven by the rising of the waters higher and higher? The ball in the emblem says ‘the harder you beat me down in afflictions, the higher I shall bound in affection towards heaven and heavenly things.’ Just so, afflictions do but elevate and raise a saint’s affections to heaven and heavenly things.

…Ah, you afflicted sons and daughters of Zion, have you not had such sweet discoveries of God, such sensible demonstrations of his love, such affections working in him towards you? Have you not had such gracious visits, and such glorious visions—which you would not exchange for all the world? Yes! Have you not had the precious presence of God with you, quieting and stilling your souls, supporting and upholding your souls, cheering and refreshing your souls? Yes!