Saturday, June 30, 2012

Helpless

We are feeling helpless in our family as our son-in-law, John Park, is being taken away by cancer.
What can we do? What can we say?  How do we pray? Even as she lovingly helps him hour after hour, day after long day, our beautiful daughter, Darleen, feels it most intensely and constantly as she loses her husband. As we feel the helplessness that almost paralyzes us, I suppose the time is coming when we will realize the necessity of this horrible feeling. This apparently is what it takes to open up to the true help that is available in God's never failing love and receive God's healing.  As the old gospel song says, "Farther along we'll know all about it; farther along we'll understand why? "

Monday, June 25, 2012

PROFOUND QUESTION

Several weeks ago our son-in-law, John Park, experiencing a ravaging cancer on a rampage through his body asked his wife, Darleen, "What's the big deal about living a long life?"  From the medical standpoint John's prognosis says his life is about over, but from the more important spirtual perspective his life is eternal. Never-the-less, this is a great question for any of us to ponder. John's relaxed cowboy life style often hid this kind of depth. Even as he askd this question, he would follow it with a compassionate regret--a deep concern about leaving Darleen so soon. Even here John's strong faith in a God whose "love never fails" will give them hope, a hope firmly anchored in Christ that will facilitate its own healing. As one who has lived a long life, I too can join a much younger John in this question, "What is the big deal?" Way back in elementary school the rage was writing in autograph books that were passed around among our school friends for them to write us a note.  Among the silly things they wrote (long before Facebook) there often appeared a quote: "And when the one great scorer comes to write aginst your name, it matters not whether you won or lost, but how you played the game."--Grantland Rice. John still "plays the game" with classic sportsmanship and Christian truth.