March 17, 2023

       Please forgive me for the late-evening post.  It has been a long day.
       Nick and I got within about three hours of home last evening and stopped for the night.  In my heart I would have preferred coming on home, but sometimes you have to choose mind over heart, which we did.  It rained most of the way and it was good to get some sleep.
       God has made us with both a heart and a mind.  Sometimes it is the right thing to follow your heart.  Sometimes you can be foolish to follow your heart when the mind should have your attention. 
       We got back to Lexington about 11:30.  I so appreciated Nick flying to Rochester to ride/drive back with me.  Our relationship will never be the same.  When you spend 12 hours with someone you get to know them much better.  He knows some things about me that some folks will never hear and I might a few about him.  He is a lawyer and I am a pastor so confidentiality goes without saying!
       Because I was already in Lexington I decided to head to Cynthiana for several reasons, at the top of the list was to see Emma because I missed her second birthday.  After seeing her, I stopped by the warehouse, picked up some paperwork, worked an order to deliver, and headed home.
       By the time I got home I was the most worn out I’d felt since leaving for Rochester.  The two-hour nap was a welcome one.
       Mayo Clinic posts on the patient portal most everything about a person’s care.  I get a text whenever anything new is posted.  I got a text today that some new test results had been posted.   That had to mean some results of the bone biopsy had been posted.
       About a page was posted.  Most of it was medical garcon, which I understood little.  There was one word I more than understood.  Malignant.  Cancer is one word we never want to hear.  I don’t know why but to me somehow malignant seems worse, especially when you read it in black and white. 
       In the Bible the illness of leprosy is often mentioned.  It was and still is a horrible disease in some parts of the world.  Leprosy made a person unclean in the Jewish faith, ostracized them from their families, and excluded them from the faith community.  Healing of leprosy was a major miracle and is recorded a very few times.  Naaman was cleansed in the Old Testament, but the most healings of leprosy were during the ministry of Jesus.
       I wonder if Jesus lived today and the New Testament was just being written if cancer wouldn’t be the “new leprosy.” Cancer does not do what leprosy did by ostracizing us from others, but what leprosy of the soul does in the Bible is pretty much the same as what cancer of the soul does.  We would practically understand cancer’s effects far more than we would leprosy.
       Cancer in the body must be eradicated or it will destroy the body and ultimately bring death.  The cancer of the soul is sin and unless it is eradicated it will destroy the body and ultimately bring death to the soul.
       Isaiah writes in maybe the most profound chapter of the Bible in Isaiah 53 these words:
“Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.”
       We so want to apply that healing to our physical bodies.  But it is obvious in the context of Isaiah 53 that the healing by the wounds of Jesus is the healing of the soul.
       Jesus died and shed His blood to heal us of the cancer of sin.  That healing begins when we repent and seek His forgiveness.  It never ends there.
       If things come down the way the doctor has indicated, after the major treatments of chemotherapy and stem cell transplant and more chemotherapy, I will then have “maintenance” treatments weekly for the rest of my life.
       Jesus’ blood healed me of the cancer of my soul when I was 17 years old.  But for over 50 years I have been receiving maintenance treatments not weekly, but daily.  None of us is without sin and so we consistently return to the fountain.
       If there comes some point in the future that I feel like I no longer need the maintenance treatments for multiple myeloma and refuse to receive the treatment for cancer, it will likely return.
       The power and penalty of sin can rear their ugly heads when we refuse to receive or believe that we no longer need the maintenance treatment of the blood that Jesus shed for us.  John’s great words from 1 John 1:9 were written to believers, those walking with Jesus.  “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”
       It’s a part of the continuing maintenance treatment.