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| Cancer's Unexpected Blessings (By: Tony Snow) |
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Commentator and broadcaster Tony Snow announced that he had colon cancer in 2005. Following surgery and chemo-therapy, Snow joined the Bush administration in April 2006 as press secretary. Unfortunately, on March 23 Snow, 51, a husband and father of three, announced that the cancer had recurred, with tumors found in his abdomen—leading to surgery in April, followed by more chemotherapy. Snow went back to work in the White House Briefing Room on May 30, but resigned August 31. CT asked Snow what spiritual lessons he has been learning through the ordeal.
Blessings arrive in unexpected packages-----in my case, cancer. Those of us with potentially fatal diseases and there are millions in America today-----find ourselves in the odd position of coping with our mortality while trying to fathom God's will. Although it would be the height of presumption to declare with confidence "What It All Means," Scripture provides powerful hints and consolations.
The first is that we shouldn't spend too much time trying to answer the "why" questions: Why me? Why must people suffer? Why can't someone else get sick? We can't answer such things, and the questions themselves often are designed more to express our anguish than to solicit an answer.
I don't know why I have cancer, and I don't much care. It is what it is----a plain and indisputable fact. Yet even while staring into a mirror darkly, great and stunning truths begin to take shape. Our maladies define a central feature of our existence: We are fallen. We are imperfect. Our bodies give out.
But despite this----or because of it----God offers the possibility of salvation and grace. We don't know how the narrative of our lives will end, but we get to choose how to use the interval between now and the moment we meet our Creator face-to-face.
Second, we need to get past the anxiety. The mere thought of dying can send adrenaline flooding through your system. A dizzy, unfocused panic seizes you. Your heart thumps; your head swims. You think of nothingness and swoon. You fear partings; you worry about the impact on family and friends. You fidget and get nowhere.
To regain footing, remember that we were born not into death, but into life, and that the journey continues after we have finished our days on this earth. We accept this on faith, but that faith is nourished by a conviction that stirs even within many nonbelieving hearts----an intuition that the gift of life, once given, cannot be taken away. Those who have been stricken enjoy the special privilege of being able to fight with their might, main, and faith to live----fully, richly, exuberantly----no matter how their days may be numbered.
Third, we can open our eyes and hearts. God relishes surprise. We want lives of simple, predictable ease----smooth, even trails as far as the eye can see, but God likes to go off-road. He provokes us with twists and turns. He places us in predicaments that seem to defy our endurance and comprehension----and yet don't. By His love and grace, we persevere. The challenges that make our hearts leap and stomachs churn invariably strengthen our faith and grant measures of wisdom and joy we would not experience otherwise.
Picture yourself in a hospital bed. The fog of anesthesia has begun to wear away. A doctor stands at your feet, a loved one holds your hand at the side. "It's cancer," the healer announces.
The natural reaction is to turn to God and ask Him to serve as a cosmic Santa. "Dear God, make it all go away. Make everything simpler." But another voice whispers: "You have been called." Your quandary has drawn you closer to God, closer to those you love, closer to the issues that matter----and has dragged into insignificance the banal concerns that occupy our "normal time."
There's another kind of response, although usually short-lived----an inexplicable shudder of excitement, as if a clarifying moment of calamity has swept away everything trivial and tiny, and placed before us the challenge of of important questions.
The moment you enter the Valley of the Shadow of Death, things change. You discover that Christianity is not something doughy, passive, pious, and soft. Faith may be the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. But it also draws you into a world shorn of fearful caution. The life of belief teems with thrills, boldness, danger, shocks, reversals, triumphs, and epiphanies. Think of Paul, traipsing through the known world and contemplating trips to what must have seemed the antipodes (Spain), shaking the dust from his sandals, worrying not about the morrow, but only about the moment.
There's nothing wilder than a life of humble virtue----for it is through selflessness and service that God wrings from our bodies and spirits the most we ever could give, the most we ever could offer, and the most we ever could do.
Finally we can let love change everything. When Jesus was faced with the prospect of crucifixion, He grieved not for Himself, but for us. He cried for Jerusalem before entering the holy city. From the Cross, He took on the cumulative burden of human sin and weakness, and begged for forgiveness on our behalf.
We get repeated chances to learn that life is not about us----that we acquire purpose and satisfaction by sharing in God's love for others. Sickness gets us part way there. It reminds us of our limitations and dependence. But it also gives us a chance to serve the healthy. A minister friend of mine observes that people suffering grave afflictions often acquire the faith of two people, while loved ones accept the burden of two peoples' worries and fears.
Most of us have watched friends as they drifted toward God's arms, not with resignation, but with peace and hope. In so doing, they have taught us not how to die, but how to live. They have emulated Christ by transmitting the power and authority of love.
I sat by my best friend's bedside a few years ago as a wasting cancer took him away. He kept at his table a worn Bible and a 1928 edition of the Book of Common Prayer. A shattering grief disabled his family, many of his old friends, and at least one priest. Here was an humble and very good guy, someone who apologized when he winced with pain because he thought it make his guest uncomfortable. He retained his equanimity and good humor literally until his last conscious moment. "I'm going to try to beat this [cancer]," he told me several months before he died. "But if I don't, I'll see you on the other side."
His gift was to remind everyone around him that even though God doesn't promise us tomorrow, He does promise us eternity----filled with life and love we cannot comprehend---and that one can in the throes of sickness point the rest of us toward timeless truths that will help us weather future storms.
Through such trials, God bids us to choose: Do we believe, or do we not? Will we be bold enough to love, daring enough to serve, humble enough to submit, and strong enough to acknowledge our limitations? Can we surrender our concern in things that don't matter so that we might devote our remaining days to things that do?
When our faith flags, He throws reminders in our way. Think of the prayer warriors in our midst. They change things, and those of us who have been on the receiving end of their petitions and intercessions know it. It is hard to describe, but there are times when suddenly the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, and you feel a surge of the Spirit. Somehow you just know: Others have chosen, when talking to the Author of all creation, to lift us up----to speak of us!!
This is love of a very special order. But so is the ability to sit back and appreciate the wonder of every created thing. The mere thought of death somehow makes every blessing vivid, every happiness more luminous and intense. We may not know how our contest with sickness will end, but we have felt the ineluctable touch of God.
What is man that Thou are mindful of him? We don't know much, but we know this: No matter where we are, no matter what we do, no matter how bleak or frightening our prospects, each and every one of us who believe, each and every day, lies in the same safe and impregnable place, in the hollow of God's hand.
~~~~~Christianity Today, July 20, 2007 |
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| To add a comment to "Cancer's Unexpected Blessings (By: Tony Snow)" |
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| July 16, 2008 |
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| What a beautiful expression of faith! I have emailed this to myself to print and add to my collection of "written things worthy of keeping". Thanks for sharing...counting my blessings and you are among them. |
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| July 17, 2008 |
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| Wow, what an example he has set for all of us and given us to think about. |
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| July 17, 2008 |
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| Wow...Tony really nailed it didn't he? I always liked watching him when he was on Fox News - there was just something about him... an inner peace - a deference to his fellow man. This provides the answer why. Thanks for posting. This one is worth keeping for sure. |
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| July 17, 2008 |
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"We want lives of simple, predictable ease----smooth, even trails as far as the eye can see, but God likes to go off-road. He provokes us with twists and turns. He places us in predicaments that seem to defy our endurance and comprehension----and yet don't. By His love and grace, we persevere. The challenges that make our hearts leap and stomachs churn invariably strengthen our faith and grant measures of wisdom and joy we would not experience otherwise." These statements lept off the page at me because I have found them to be so true in my life over this past year in particular and really in the events of the last couple of years. When I didn't think I could hold on, He met me there - sometimes in the phone call of one of you, sometimes in a card, sometimes in a book, often in the words of music, prayer, or His word. I see His control more clearly. I am less hyper about things that don't matter - if I make a wrong turn or forget something and have to go back to get it - I am less frustrated and more likely to say, OK Lord what do you want me to learn - how does this event apply to my life in You today. Sometimes those little annoying things trigger me to pray about someone or something I hadn't thought about - if I just let go of the annoyance. I don't do it well all the time - today was a classic example of me allowing a rude driver to distract me from the Throne of Grace. I didn't let go of it immediately and most of my drive to work I spent thinking about this rude person instead of talking to my Savior and King - bad choice on my part. I have seen what Tony describes in the lives a few people- people who chose to respond to the call in the face of the unknown of cancer or other terminal illness. Mina Parrow - I saw the Holy Spirit in her more and more as she moved closer to heaven. The same thing with Betty - she blessed me so when I visited and talked with her that words can't even capture the impact on my heart. "Through such trials, God bids us to choose: Do we believe, or do we not? Will we be bold enough to love, daring enough to serve, humble enough to submit, and strong enough to acknowledge our limitations? Can we surrender our concern in things that don't matter so that we might devote our remaining days to things that do?" I hope that I choose wisely.
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| July 17, 2008 |
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When I read Tony Snow's testimony, it really touched my heart and I figured others would want to read it as well...I really like all your comments and Lynda, I know you would understand the
"off-road" experience that Tony was talking about because of all you've been through recently...Thank you for sharing some of the things you have learned..On a lighter note, a friend of mine had this to say about Tony Snow, "...it was fun watching him do his thing as press secretary. He let reporters (most of whom were liberal) know when they were asking stupid or obviously leading questions. And as others have said, he was always prepared." |
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| July 17, 2008 |
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I was saddened to learn that Tony Snow had passed away. I, like many others, enjoyed watching and listening to him, and even though I knew little about him, I felt like he was a man of much integrity. Now I know why; he was a man of much faith. This is a profound testimony. Thanks for posting it Vicky! |
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