Posted on 07/12/2008 6:08:32 AM PDT by PurpleMan
We get repeated chances to learn that life is not about us—that we acquire purpose and satisfaction by sharing in God's love for others. Sickness gets us partway there. It reminds us of our limitations and dependence. But it also gives us a chance to serve the healthy. A minister friend of mine observes that people suffering grave afflictions often acquire the faith of two people, while loved ones accept the burden of two people's worries and fears.
(Excerpt) Read more at christianitytoday.com ...
Very sad, indeed R.I.P.
Good read, thanks for posting.
“Most of us have watched friends as they drifted toward God’s arms not with resignation, but with peace and hope. In so doing, they have taught us not how to die, but how to live. They have emulated Christ by transmitting the power and authority of love”.
My favorite quote from Tony’s article. God works in mysterious ways. I really needed to hear this today.
You know I am going to take this article to heart.
Thank you Tony for reminding us what Life, Faith, Hope, the Love of God and Love for friends, Family, and Life is all about.
I knew that there was a good reason to keep coming back to FR. Thanks for the link.
Fantastic essay Tony Snow. Rest in peace. You will be remembered fondly by all who have hearts.
ping
RIP, Tony. Thank you for leaving behind your incredible words of inspiration and of your unshakable faith, to be a reminder to the rest of us, when times get tough, and we start feeling sorry for ourselves.
Printed and bookmarked.
Thank you!
The man lived his life with such class and dignity.
He will be missed by everyone who knew and loved him.
A loyal friend and an honorable journalist. Something rare indeed.
In a million year he would never have done what his predecessor at White House Press Secretary did.
Oh, don’t be sad..By Tony’s words, you can see the joy and love he has not for himself but for others.
Yes, I am sure that he wishes that everything was different. So, he is using his time here to remind us what living is really all about.
correction: I am sure Tony wished things were different.
He was a good man, going to miss him.
As always a brilliant piece by the Snowman. God doesn’t owe us anything, we owe him. And now we owe him more for giving us Snowman who is the epitomy of God’s child in both Life and Death.
We will miss that little twinkle in his eye when he talked about the braindead left. Tony was one of God’s really good gifts. We will miss his articulation as well as his civility in an uncivil world. Say hi to Ronnie for us Snowman.
Well said bray.........just beautiful.........
BTTT from a snowflake.
Tony allowed the light of Christ to shine through him in a world of darkness! Now he reigns with Him in a place where there is no disease and no darkness at all.
Tony Snow was a class act. Prayers up for his family.
Thanks, PurpleMan
Tony Snow Ping
In my previous post, I overlooked thanking you for posting this wonderful essay, which many of us had missed last year. It can now serve to illuminate the way for others who are journeying through difficult challenges.
Thank you for posting Tony’s essay.
Tis such a short life,
will soon be past,
only that done,
for Christ shall last.
Go with God, Tony.
I figured that since all of the TV gas-bags were talking about him (and mant misrepresenting him) , it would be better if he spoke for himself.
I figured that since all of the TV gas-bags were talking about him (and many misrepresenting him) , it would be better if he spoke for himself.
Per our convo, I thought you might enjoy this essay by Tony Snow.
I read this again....what a wonder person Tony Snow was/is...’Rest In Peace’
Wonderful article. Thanks for posting this.
May God bless Tony Snow and his family that remains here on earth.
Tony Snow — Catholic Convert bump.
Blessings arrive in unexpected packages—in my case, cancer.
Those of us with potentially fatal diseases—and there are millions in America today—find ourselves in the odd position of coping with our mortality while trying to fathom God's will. Although it would be the height of presumption to declare with confidence What It All Means, Scripture provides powerful hints and consolations.
The first is that we shouldn't spend too much time trying to answer the why questions: Why me? Why must people suffer? Why can't someone else get sick? We can't answer such things, and the questions themselves often are designed more to express our anguish than to solicit an answer.
I don't know why I have cancer, and I don't much care. It is what it is—a plain and indisputable fact. Yet even while staring into a mirror darkly, great and stunning truths begin to take shape. Our maladies define a central feature of our existence: We are fallen. We are imperfect. Our bodies give out.
But despite this—because of it—God offers the possibility of salvation and grace. We don't know how the narrative of our lives will end, but we get to choose how to use the interval between now and the moment we meet our Creator face-to-face.
Second, we need to get past the anxiety. The mere thought of dying can send adrenaline flooding through your system. A dizzy, unfocused panic seizes you. Your heart thumps; your head swims. You think of nothingness and swoon. You fear partings; you worry about the impact on family and friends. You fidget and get nowhere.
To regain footing, remember that we were born not into death, but into life—and that the journey continues after we have finished our days on this earth. We accept this on faith, but that faith is nourished by a conviction that stirs even within many nonbelieving hearts—an intuition that the gift of life, once given, cannot be taken away. Those who have been stricken enjoy the special privilege of being able to fight with their might, main, and faith to live—fully, richly, exuberantly—no matter how their days may be numbered.
Third, we can open our eyes and hearts. God relishes surprise. We want lives of simple, predictable ease—smooth, even trails as far as the eye can see—but God likes to go off-road. He provokes us with twists and turns. He places us in predicaments that seem to defy our endurance and comprehension—and yet don't. By his love and grace, we persevere. The challenges that make our hearts leap and stomachs churn invariably strengthen our faith and grant measures of wisdom and joy we would not experience otherwise.
'You Have Been Called'
Picture yourself in a hospital bed. The fog of anesthesia has begun to wear away. A doctor stands at your feet; a loved one holds your hand at the side. "It's cancer," the healer announces.
The natural reaction 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. You discover that Christianity is not something doughy, passive, pious, and soft. Faith may be the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. But it also draws you into a world shorn of fearful caution. The life of belief teems with thrills, boldness, danger, shocks, reversals, triumphs, and epiphanies. Think of Paul, traipsing though the known world and contemplating trips to what must have seemed the antipodes (Spain), shaking the dust from his sandals, worrying not about the morrow, but only about the moment.
There's nothing wilder than a life of humble virtue—for it is through selflessness and service that God wrings from our bodies and spirits the most we ever could give, the most we ever could offer, and the most we ever could do.
Finally, we can let love change everything. When Jesus was faced with the prospect of crucifixion, he grieved not for himself, but for us. He cried for Jerusalem before entering the holy city. From the Cross, he took on the cumulative burden of human sin and weakness, and begged for forgiveness on our behalf.
We get repeated chances to learn that life is not about us—that we acquire purpose and satisfaction by sharing in God's love for others. Sickness gets us partway there. It reminds us of our limitations and dependence. But it also gives us a chance to serve the healthy. A minister friend of mine observes that people suffering grave afflictions often acquire the faith of two people, while loved ones accept the burden of two people's worries and fears.
Learning How to Live
Most of us have watched friends as they drifted toward God's arms not with resignation, but with peace and hope. In so doing, they have taught us not how to die, but how to live. They have emulated Christ by transmitting the power and authority of love.
I sat by my best friend's bedside a few years ago as a wasting cancer took him away. He kept at his table a worn Bible and a 1928 edition of the Book of Common Prayer. A shattering grief disabled his family, many of his old friends, and at least one priest. Here was a humble and very good guy, someone who apologized when he winced with pain because he thought it made his guest uncomfortable. He retained his equanimity and good humor literally until his last conscious moment. "I'm going to try to beat [this cancer]," he told me several months before he died. "But if I don't, I'll see you on the other side."
His gift was to remind everyone around him that even though God doesn't promise us tomorrow, he does promise us eternity—filled with life and love we cannot comprehend—and that one can in the throes of sickness point the rest of us toward timeless truths that will help us weather future storms.
Through such trials, God bids us to choose: Do we believe, or do we not? Will we be bold enough to love, daring enough to serve, humble enough to submit, and strong enough to acknowledge our limitations? Can we surrender our concern in things that don't matter so that we might devote our remaining days to things that do?
When our faith flags, he throws reminders in our way. Think of the prayer warriors in our midst. They change things, and those of us who have been on the receiving end of their petitions and intercessions know it.
It is hard to describe, but there are times when suddenly the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, and you feel a surge of the Spirit. Somehow you just know: Others have chosen, when talking to the Author of all creation, to lift us up—to speak of us!
This is love of a very special order. But so is the ability to sit back and appreciate the wonder of every created thing. The mere thought of death somehow makes every blessing vivid, every happiness more luminous and intense. We may not know how our contest with sickness will end, but we have felt the ineluctable touch of God.
What is man that Thou art mindful of him? We don't know much, but we know this: No matter where we are, no matter what we do, no matter how bleak or frightening our prospects, each and every one of us, each and every day, lies in the same safe and impregnable place—in the hollow of God's hand.
Tony Snow spoke to reporters about his cancer in a White House press briefing.
Cal Thomas wrote about Snow in a 2007 column, "The Tony Snow I Know."
Wise words from a good man.
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