HIGH SPIRITS: The Topic of Cancer
Aitken, Jonathan
H I G H s P I R I T s The Topic of Cancer by Jonathan aitken conventional wisdom of the 21st century. Medically our doctors are increasingly skillful at helping us cope with the disease....
...6 0 T H e a M e R I c a n s P e c T a T o R M a R c H 2 0 0 8 j o n a T H a n a I T K e n Answer: a milk sheikh...
...Skeptics would no doubt call this a deathbed conversion, but I believe my mother traveled peacefully from this world to the next with the assurance of divine mercy...
...She even encouraged the idea of a sweepstakes on the actual number of days she had left...
...My mother was a lifelong agnostic of the mischievous, if not militant, tendency...
...I remember a discussion about whether prayers for Fergus would help him...
...This is the God who helps the terminally ill to die peacefully and comforts their friends and relatives in the dark hour of bereavement...
...I was far from calm, becoming hyperactive in prayer, asking a small army of friends, pastors, groups, and churches to make special intercessions...
...was one question The word “miracle” should never be introduced into cases where surgeons have exercised their skills with better than expected outcomes...
...Then she was scheduled for major surgery of a large area around the eye, nose, and sinuses after a later CT scan suggested that the cancer had spread upwards...
...So where was God when Fergus needed him...
...M a R c H 2 0 0 8 T H e a M e R I c a n s P e c T a T o R 6 1...
...I gently suggested that mocking God might be taking an unnecessary risk on the eve of eternity...
...Contrary to the medical prognosis, Elizabeth’s cancer had not spread beyond the lachrymal sack...
...Their personal stories and their medical end games were so different that it is not easy to detect a common theme of spirituality in their cases...
...When she was diagnosed with advanced cancer of the pancreas she joked “what a frightful bore” it was that the doctors had given her just three months to live...
...In particular, my mother, my wife, and my son’s best school friend have been recent cancer sufferers...
...But does it make the slightest difference to the clinical odds in the kill-or-cure stakes...
...As she passed away in good spiritual shape (just...
...God offers us a minimum of protection but the maximum of support,” is Yancey’s wry but realistic conclusion...
...To my surprise, my mother dropped her usually combative stance and said in a quiet voice that she would think about it...
...After six hours in the operating theatre, it became clear that those prayers had been well answered...
...Sitting up in bed with a glass in her hand, she enjoyed teasing me and everyone else who had faith by insisting that the idea of life after death was celestial moonshine and that we were wasting our time bothering God on her behalf...
...I have been pondering such questions because I have reached an age when an increasing number of my friends and relatives seem to be confirming that one in three statistic...
...Medically our doctors are increasingly skillful at helping us cope with the disease...
...But I will always believe that prayer played its part in returning my from a devastated classmate...
...There were no answers at the time, yet his passing and his deeply moving funeral planted spiritual seeds...
...It may not be a coinci dence that Fergus’s sister and at least one of his closest friends are today among the finest young Christians you could hope to meet...
...Minor surgery to remove the blockage found a malignant lump, which a CT scan had failed to identify...
...These boys were of the view that laughter is the best medicine, so much time was spent in the car rehearsing corny jokes to tell the patient...
...But as always on the precipice of life and death, when God is prayed to, there are mysteries...
...But I will always believe that prayer played its part in returning my wife to cancerfree good health...
...Religious faith can clearly be a comfort to many believers...
...During this testing time Elizabeth maintained a mood of calm acceptance, saying, “The Lord’s will be done...
...Yes, she said, and in full command of her faculties she duly received absolution, an anointing with holy oil, and God’s blessing...
...Sample: What do you call an Arabian dairy farmer...
...The author thinks it does, but is no starry-eyed illusionist about the contradictory evidence on the link “Those who pray for the sick and suffering should first praise God for the remarkable agents of healing designed into the body and then ask that God’s special grace give the suffering person the ability to use those resources to their fullest advantage...
...and, in John Keats’s phrase, “half in love with easeful death” at the ripe old age of 94, there was much to give thanks for about the ending of my mother’s life...
...For two years he battled with the disease...
...This was certainly not the situation when my son’s best friend Fergus was struck down with leukemia at the age of 14...
...wife to cancer-free good health...
...The word “miracle” should never be introduced into cases where surgeons have exercised their skills with better than expected outcomes...
...His biographies include Charles W. Colson: A Life Redeemed (Doubleday) and Nixon: A Life, now available in a new paperback edition (Regnery...
...Although many were said both in the car and later under the direction of the school chaplain, they did not, apparently, make any difference, for this gloriously lovable boy passed away at 16...
...A week or so later, when she was just a few hours from death, our parish priest dropped in to say his farewells...
...One evening after she had aired her views with gusto to the assembled company of valedictory champagne drinkers, we were left on our own together...
...In layman’s language, the tumor was caught in time...
...The prayers of fellow Christians can offer real tangible help by setting in motion the intrinsic powers of healing controlled by God...
...The reconstruction of her face, which was expected to require major plastic surgery, was so delicately done that a magnifying glass is needed to see that anything has changed in her beautiful appearance...
...Exhaustive tests have since confirmed that she is completely clear of the disease...
...But what about the spiritual dimension of facing up to this illness CanCer will affliCt one in three of us, says the when it seems to be life threatening...
...Yancey ends his chapter on Prayer and Physical Healing by quoting another Paul, the great Apostle, in the famous passage on the “God of all comfort” (2 Corinthians 1:3-5...
...Is prayer a detour of delusion or a route to recovery...
...I have seen remarkable instances of physical healing accomplished in this way...
...T c s l a m r h c a e t f o o m u t c t o t t l cu last sum de m e er w t as a r rare, h inv l asive y , and d a iffi k - . Paul Brand: r o e r u s d e n w o n r e h m o r f t n e m m o c l b s n s he CanCer that struCk my wife Elizabeth b e etw i ee e n prayer an d phys t ical h e ealing...
...This thought can be a reassurance to cancer sufferers, cancer families, and cancer prayer givers even when the medical results are not the ones that were first asked for...
...H e qu g otes n t D his . The watering eye that troubled her on our August vacation was misdiagnosed by various doctors as too much exposure to the sun, a viral infection, and a soft tissue blockage of the tear duct...
...H I G H s P I R I T s The Topic of Cancer by Jonathan aitken conventional wisdom of the 21st century...
...best-seller, Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference...
...The wisest general answer I hav l i s u o i e s d n h t i a f t a s u l e o s h t at r , ie if s t an l ythin b G o , u do thes a e thre r e canc l e e r - read recently is to be found in Philip Yancey’s latest jonathan aitken, The American Spectator’s High Spirits columnist, is most recently author of John Newton: From Disgrace to Amazing Grace (Crossway Books...
...Wness...
...On the drive home the mood was more somber...
...From time to time I chauffeured carloads of his school contemporaries on visits to his hospital, which geographically and medically is more or less the European equivalent of the Mayo Clinic...
...When I asked what she wanted done for her in her last weeks, the opening of champagne bottles rather than the saying of prayers was her priority...
...He asked her if she would like to receive the last rites...
Vol. 41 • March 2008 • No. 2
