On my first visit to the oncologist, he explained a number of things to me - the basics of cancer and lymphoma, the types of treatments and the do's and don'ts of chemo. He also asked me a number of questions including some which made me wonder why - what do I do for a living, how many kids do I have, their age and gender. When I was settling the bill, he asked a final question, whether I had "finished my family planning". Besides a chuckle, I didn't hesitate to tell him that we were done having kids. But not wanting to assume, I did ask my wife when I got home that evening.
It did make me think - a single living cell can form into a complete person, and a single cell if it mutates without self-destructing can take a complete life. That is all it takes, a single cell to kick off life-altering events. Crazy stuff. I read what a doctor said in a recent Humans of New York Facebook post "The extraordinary thing is that cancer doesn’t happen more often... There are numerous fail-safes at every level to prevent mistakes. How is it possible that it ever works correctly?"
I am reminded of what the book of Genesis records for us. In the six days of creation, God saw what He had created and they were all good. Every cell and every molecule, they were good. Not certain that everything was good looking by our current human standard, but they were all good - no mistakes, no blemishes, no 14-18 chromosomal translocation which is characteristic of follicular lymphoma. There was a time when everything was just good. I believe this and I believe that this is the reason why "cancer doesn't happen more often". Our world, although fallen, still echoes God's amazing good works. Over the ages, the not-goods of this world haven't overcome the good works of God.
Sometimes, it is easy to lose sight of the goodness of life because God exists. With all the horrible things happening around the world today, it is not difficult to conclude that there isn't a God or if he exist, he certainly isn't in control. I did it once before, I un-believed that God exist. But then some crazy stuff happened and I realised that God can speak loudly. Everything that is good speaks of God, and everything that is not as good as it can be speaks of our need for God.
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