Cancer War Comrades and the Heidelberg Catechism (#31)

[A note from our Managing Editor: Tim Shorey, pastor and author, is one of our Gospel-Centered Discipleship staff writers. Tim is also currently battling stage 4 prostate cancer. On Facebook and CaringBridge, he’s writing about his journey. We’re including some of his posts in a series on our website called “The Potter’s Clay: Faith Reflections from a Cancer Oven.” To preserve the feel of a daily journal rather than a published work, we have chosen not to submit these reflections to a rigorous editing process.]

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Dear Journal,

So recently, I was in the cancer ward for another of my destined-to-be-lifelong treatments. There were 30-35 patients in the treatment room, and another 20 or so in the waiting room. That’s a lot of cancer in one place, and I can assure you that it’s a deeply affecting sight. Everyone there (except family members) is quite literally fighting for his or her life. An agent of death is in them, and every type of available medical arsenal there is, is being deployed to kill it. Every treatment is a desperate search-and-destroy mission.

You feel something abnormal when you look into the face of dozens of people gathered in a pretty small space, all of whom are very sick, having been struck with the deadly “c-word.” But for some reason, in my recent “visit” when I was sitting and waiting, I intentionally scanned the rooms to look at people’s faces, and I couldn’t help but feel sadness for them all—old, young, and in-between. As I sat there, I could almost see the “C” letter hanging on every neck in that room. We were all marked for intense physical battles in a fight for life.

But then it hit me that as I was feeling sadness for them, many of them were probably looking at me, and feeling the same sadness for me, even if unspoken. In a cancer ward, it is more than him or her or me; it is us. It’s a club that no one wants to join. But we are cancer comrades—and that makes for a pervasive sense of sympathy all around. The ward is a place where empathy gas seems pumped through the vents to fill the room. It’s where you can fairly safely say (even if you never actually say it), “I know what you’re feeling,” because you do; at least in general, if not in the details.

But here is where I must hold fast to truth. It is true that I am a cancer fighter and comrade, and that cancer has assumed an invasive place in my body. And it is also true that, unless God heals, cancer will be in me to my dying day. But it is not true that cancer has changed my identity.

I cannot deny that I am a cancer victim, fighter, and comrade. But that doesn’t define me. I am more than that. I am Christ’s cancer fighter. Because I am “in Christ” he is in me. And because I am in Christ, I belong to him, and he, to me. Three and a half years into this battle, it is still true what I said way back near the start. Jesus is mine, and my big-C Christ rules over little-c cancer every time. I am his, and he loves me very much—whether or not he heals me this side of heaven. And that is never going to change.

It reminds me of the beautiful first question and answer of the Heidelberg Catechism (from way back in the Protestant Reformation. Here is some nourishment for the cancer-sick and sin-sick soul.

Question: What is your only comfort in life and in death?

Answer: That I am not my own, but belong—body and soul, in life and in death—to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ. He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood, and has set me free from the tyranny of the devil. He also watches over me in such a way that not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my Father in heaven; in fact, all things must work together for my salvation. Because I belong to him, Christ, by his Holy Spirit, assures me of eternal life and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him.”

I could never have said it any better.

Thank you, Jesus.

* You can read all the posts in this series here.