Spared!

The most unpleasant word had now become part of the sweetest sentence I had ever heard. The news poured sweetly from my Mom's heart through her slightly shaking voice. She was almost afraid to say the words.

She had earlier been told that she had a malignancy in her breast. In fact, ten days earlier, that word made our world stop. And even though life was going right along without us, we all were taken to a place void of comfort. Dispiriting uncertainty made us question everything in life that once felt so secure.

As I drove away after hearing the wonderful news, these words came over and over, incessantly, some to myself, some out loud, "Thank you God. Thank you for sparing my Mom from this. Thank you for sparing my Mom. Thank you God!"

I tasted a freedom like I had never known. For the first time in two weeks, I took a deep breath — a long peaceful breath. All the sounds and smells of this otherwise ordinary day enraptured my soul with pure sweetness. Driving in and out of soft dapples of the autumn sun, I soaked in every wonderful minute of that day. For a few fleeting moments, I was disentangled and floating above every problem I had ever known in this world. For a time that day, I was completely liberated from all worry and fear.

As days passed and fell to weeks, we all began to settle back into the normalcy of our lives. It was a bit sad to feel the elation begin to fade. Although I was no less thankful that my Mom did not have cancer, I couldn't help but think of all of those who have not received positive news like we did. One afternoon as I struggled for some sort of understanding about God's reason for such suffering, I came across an excerpt from Rebecca Bentley Gay, a 5-time breast cancer survivor. She wrote: "You know the more I think about Heaven and how wonderful the feeling of total and complete love all of the time must feel, it makes death just a natural part of living and not so bad."

In reading those words, I felt my eternal vision becoming clearer. Every time we open up our Bibles, we are reminded that everyone who loves the Lord and accepts Him HAS BEEN SPARED! Because God wants us in Heaven with Him and loves us so much, He spared us all of the fatal affects of sin. So go ahead ... take a deep breath and soak in every wonderful minute of this life. You can do that with the knowledge that God has taken care of it all.

"Whoever accepts and trusts the Son gets in on everything, life complete and forever!" (John 3:36)

"And we know, know it in our bones, that one day we'll be thrilled beyond words that God brought 'trouble' into our lives. We'll see the change ... the glad, wonderful, glorious change he has worked in us, and if someone should ask if it has been worth all the trouble, we'll say, 'What trouble?'" Jim McGuiggan from The God of the Towel.