One Day

You can read the lyrics here. This is a song one of my friends sent me a while ago.

I was thinking about this song this morning, and how intensely I long to be done with this cancer BS, and how one day we'll all be free from suffering... And it reminded me again of Revelation 21: 3-5

"Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man.

He will dwell with them, and they will be His people,

and God Himself will be with them as their God.

He will wipe away every tear from their eyes,

and death shall be no more,

neither shall there be mourning,

nor crying, nor pain anymore,

for the former things have passed away."

And He who was seated on the throne said, "Behold, I am making all things new."

And it is true; one day there won't be any persecution of people who follow Jesus.

One day women won't have their noses cut off or acid thrown on them or be brutally raped with sticks because they are believers.

One day a mother will be judged for holding her son in boiling hot water, burning seventy percent of his body with third degree burns.

One day men and women and children won't be beheaded or buried alive or tortured because they are believers.

One day there won't be any cancer.

One day there won't be any Lou Gehrigs's disease.

One day there won't be mental illnesses tormenting people.

One day there won't be a single cell malfunctioning in my body.

One of the things that made me think about this more is finding a boney lump inside my mouth, on the inside of my upper jaw. It's still tiny, about 1/8 of an inch, but I started to get afraid as I imagined dying by suffocation from an enormous tumor in my mouth, or of starving to death because I couldn't eat anything because my mouth was completely blocked, or of not being able to close my mouth because the tumor was so huge.

Then, trying to be rational, I stopped and thought about it more carefully: If the cancer is so advanced that it's in my mouth, it's very highly likely that cancer somewhere else in my body is way more advanced and way more likely to get Jesus to come for me. 

Being rational and focusing on His promises really helps...

I also have been encouraged by a book called Safely Home, by Randy Alcorn. If you enjoy a well crafted story, have questions about why people suffer, why God allows suffering, and how God feels about our suffering, or if you have any interest in the persecuted church or human rights issues in China, you should read it. It's a life-changing, paradigm-shifting book. I dare you to read it.

One of the things that has really helped me is to remember how much worse my suffering could be. Not that it won't ever get worse, or that I'm not suffering, or that my suffering doesn't matter, just that there are many people who are suffering much more than I am and I need to be asking God to protect them and keep them in His grace and peace.