June 26, 2013 The Artist

From one of my favorite chapters in the Bible, "And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose"  Romans 8: 28.

Thomas Brooks says of this verse, "Consider that all your afflictions, troubles and trials shall work for your good.  Why then should you fret, fling, fume considering God intends you good in all?  The bee sucks sweetest honey out of the bitterest herbs;  so God will by afflictions teach His children to suck sweet knowledge, sweet obedience, sweet experiences, and sweet humility out of all the bitter afflictions and trials He exercises them with.  That scouring and rubbing, which frets others, shall make them shine the brighter;  and that weight, which keeps others crushed, shall but make them, like the palm tree, grow better and higher; and that hammer, which knocks others all into pieces, shall but knock them nearer to Christ, the Corner Stone.

Stars shine brightest in the darkest night; torches give the best light when beaten;  grapes yield the most wine when pressed;  spices smell sweetest when pounded; vines are the better for bleeding; gold looks the brighter for scouring; juniper smells sweetest in the fire; chamomile, the more you tread it the more you spread it; the salamander lives best in the fire; the Jews were best when most afflicted.

Afflictions are the saints' best benefactors to heavenly affections.  Where afflictions hang heaviest, corruptions hang loosest.  And grace that is hidden in nature, as sweet water in rose leaves, is then most fragrant when the fire of affliction is put under to distill it out.  Grace shines the brightest for scouring and is most glorious when it is most clouded."  Thomas Brooks (The Mute Christian Under The Smarting Rod)

I spent a profitable day at MD Anderson Monday.  While there, I was reminded several times that God knows what we need before we even ask.  I was assigned a new medical oncologist which was a big answer to prayer.  He spent over an hour discussing my case and my options with me, compared to the last one who came in for 60 seconds and left everything else to his PA.  I also obtained an application for financial aid for their bills and was stopped by an employee who saw me looking at it and informed me that they might be able to even help pay for COBRA which I will be facing soon.   The day was a reminder to me that I have an awesome God who holds me in the palm of His hand!

They do not feel from their testing that the sarcoma is anywhere else besides the left femur (hip bone).  His recommendation, and the recommendation of the entire tumor board there, is that I start by taking more chemotherapy.  It is different from the last, and should be a bit easier to tolerate, though it does have some pretty nasty new side effects.  They have about a 70% positive response rate for my kind of sarcoma and a 20% remission rate.  The goal is to shrink the lesion and prevent the spread of the sarcoma elsewhere.  If it is successful, they will either do more chemo and/or recommend surgery along with adding a medication to get the bone to remineralize.  He did feel there was a good chance of the lesion shrinking and becoming more stable.   Right now the big concern is a pathological fracture which would be very hard to treat and would spread the sarcoma more quickly.  I will visit with my local oncologist on Thursday, but am thinking I will probably try this treatment, at least for two rounds when they would rescan and see if it is at all successful.

As my son drove me back on Monday my thoughts were on the beauty of God's creation and paintings.   I love to watch my daughter, Rachel, paint.  Perhaps because she did not get her talent from me, I am always amazed to watch her paint a portrait as it is so mysterious until close to the end.  She starts with a blank canvas and paints some colors in the background, then paints over and rubs out again and again.  During this whole process I often cannot figure out who the subject of the painting is until she completes her work.  It is not the subject being painted, the paint or the canvas that makes the painting so good;  it is the artist.  Likewise when I see a magnificent sunset, I often think of how it is not the same from one second to another, but THE artist, the Creator, who paints the sunset every day makes it an ever changing scene.  And so, perhaps, is the painting that Artist is doing of me.  It is a process and I can't see what it is going to look like along the way, but I can know that all the different parts He paints will one day form a reflection of His Son, Christ Jesus.  But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord. (II Corinthians 3:18.)   In knowing that, I can look beyond the trials of the process He allows me to go through and focus on Him and the end result.  I pray for grace to do that!

Where God loves, He afflicts in love; and wherever God afflicts in love, there He teaches lessons to His beloved children that will do them good for all eternity. Our afflictions are designed so that we may love the Lord more, fear the Lord more, please the Lord more, cleave to the Lord more, wait on the Lord more, and walk with the Lord more!

They are designed to increase our courage in God, strengthen our patience in God, raise our faith in God, inflame our love in God, and enliven our hopes in God.

They are designed to teach us how to die to sin more, how to live to Christ more, how to lift up Christ more, how to worship Christ more, how to adore Christ more, and how to long for Christ more. Yes, brethren, they are sent in love! ~ Thomas Brooks