Grace

Sunday night 25 September 2011.

A few thoughts put on paper

It is late Sunday night. I completed a proposal to Volkswagen at 22h30 and then rushed to bed to watch SCI: NY at 23h00. As usual I fell asleep just before the end and I was so frustrated to wake up with Special Assignment showing and a woman with cancer speaking. Now I am wide awake and watching. They showed from the beginning of her illness to her funeral. She was diagnosed with cancer at a very late stage. She had the lump under her arm but was told she will know it is breast cancer when the colour of her breast starts changing. The system failed her.  I looked at all her suffering. It was terrible! She died and left a ten year old daughter behind. And I felt the dark pit of cancer again. But fortunately I know that By His Stripes I am healed. And I stretched out my hand to touch His garment.  

The doctor on screen explained in simple terms what cancer is and it sounds like such a simple disease while it is so complex and dreaded.

“A Cancer is a cell that has lost its normal control mechanism and thus has unregulated growth.  Cancer can develop from any tissue within any organ.  As cancer cells grow and multiply, they form a mass of cancerous tissue that invades adjacent tissues and can spread (metastasize) around the body.”

On Wednesday I assisted the staff to take a twelve year old girl to a place of Safety. Her mother died of an Aids related disease and her father is on drugs and the house is very dirty. About two hours afterwards, not even so long, I started to feel ill and was ill the rest of week till Gavin came to pray for me on Saturday afternoon.  My left arm has an infection again. I am on my way to the cancer unit this morning.

It is so strange that last Saturday when I wrote my sermon on the Godly Home I spent a wonderful time in God’s presence and the reality of Max Lucado’s book In the grip of Grace became Rhema to me. I read the Afrikaans version. “In die Greep van God se Genade” and  decided to be in the Grip of His Grace forever. I am going to publish part of my sermon on the blog.

I have many times preached on God’s grace but never understood it as fully as I do now. It changed my life completely. This understanding that it is a free gift from God to me. I do not need to do anything. Louis Giglio says that at the core of the gospel lies the extravaganza of a loving Father powerfully expressed in the grace of a willing Saviour.

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