So be generous during your life and give to charity, with your heart, not just from the excess change in the bottom of your pocket. This is especially true now, when many people are struggling to financially stay afloat.
Posted on 10/30/2009 10:09:23 AM PDT by NYer
Patti Maguire Armstrong is the mother of ten children including two Kenyan AIDS orphans. She is a speaker and the author of Catholic Truths for Our Children: A Parent's Guide (Scepter) and the children's book, Dear God, I Don't Get It!" (Bezalel). She was also the managing editor and co-author of Ascension Press's Amazing Grace book series. Her website is RaisingCatholicKids.com.
I disagree that cancer is a gift.
So be generous during your life and give to charity, with your heart, not just from the excess change in the bottom of your pocket. This is especially true now, when many people are struggling to financially stay afloat.
Good post.
Great article!
Amen on THAT!
I do have a question though for my Christian friends. I’m pretty much agnostic and always questioning and this is one question I ask myself that I can’t seem to understand. If you truly in heart and soul believe that God promises an eternal wonderful life, why do we then see doctors to stave off death? Why aren’t people killing themselves routinely to enter this wonderful Kingdom?
I’m honestly not at all trying to be snarky, but it just makes no sense to me. Just as this person saying that cancer is a “gift”. Nope. Just don’t understand that at all.
I don’t understand what God created cancer in the first place, much less create people that He knows will die horribly from it, and their loved ones will suffer along with them.
I guess if you don’t promise something, then no one will do what you tell tehm to.
I’m pretty with you on all that. I just don’t understand how a Loving God could or would have horrific diseases and horrible deaths on his agenda.
You have to look at the big picture.
My dad died of cancer when I was 21. People look at me and say, “How do you live with your Dad dying while you were so young?”
It taught me that life is very short. That one must love bigger than time. That every moment is a gift. And that love stays even when the person is gone.
I teach my children these things because I could be hit by a bus tomorrow. None of us live forever.
Those who are religious know that those that pass before us are in heaven. We will see them again. We learn patience. And personally, I don’t get how anyone who doesn’t trust in Our Lord makes it through.
Its not hard to understand. You have things to do here. You have people who count on you. You've probably seen the stories of the wounded soldiers jumping through every hoop to get back to their unit in combat, their pals are counting on them. When you get ready to draw your last breath you'll be looking at what you've left undone and you may fight to stay and finish it, or you may be at peace with what you've done and you'll make ready to leave.
As for cancer, I know very well that its not a pleasant way to go. If you go in a car wreck you've had no time to say your goodbys or get your affairs in order. The cancer patient does, on the other hand, know pretty certainly that he is on his way out and has that chance to say goodby and settle his affairs.
My opinion is that, if life is eternal, then its already eternal. My primary wish is to leave things in order, leave my family in order, hopefully outlive my wife so I can know I saw her all the way to the end, and then go out myself as gracefully as possible for the sake of the kids who must watch me go. I don't fear death at all, only leaving things in a mess when I go.
I once had a thought that death walked across the universe to finally meet you. He has to walk it and we have to meet him. The meeting will be as natural as birth.
I figure He isn’t a loving God, as we would define loving. I think He is above any kind of human description we can assign to Him.
A co-worker of mine lost his sister to cancer last week. She was 41. Two days later his brother-in-law, his sister’s husband, died. He was 44 and they left two children, 16 and 11. I doubt that anyone in that family is looking at death as their friend.
My father had a massive stroke at 37. Lost his speech and was paralyzed on his right side. Was given 24-48 hours max to live. He lived 9 years with the love of his family (me, my mother, and my brother) taking care of him every day until I was 11 years old when he died while I was out at a birthday party.
Sometimes what is understood doesn’t need to be discussed.
What a beautiful post. So full of love.
There is a bigger picture than we see a moment at a time.
Life is long.
No one sees the blessings immediately.
I’m curious as to how many people have looked a cancer patient in the face, and told them it’s a gift from God?
CS Lewis wrote two seminal books on the subject...The Problem of Pain and A Grief Observed. The second is essentially a collection of his notes following the death of his one true love...Joy Gresham, who like his mother died of a horrible cancer. A cynic need not even pick them up to easily dismiss his works as rationalizations within a Christian context, but I'd invite anybody who cares to be intellectually honest about the matter to at least take a look at them. If you'd care to peruse them, Chapter 1 of "A Grief Observed" is available here.
I observe grief everyday, first hand. I don’t need a book.
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