Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Cancer's unexpected blessings

A 2007 article by Tony Snow, who recently died of cancer. An excerpt:

The natural reaction [to cancer diagnosis] 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 tinny, and placed before us the challenge of important questions.

The moment you enter the Valley of the Shadow of Death, things change.

Read the rest here.

via DarwinCatholic

1 comment:

Kimberly said...

I read this and wept copiously. How beautiful. My pastor said it the best: "his faith was luminous."

Look forward to chatting with him on the other side.