The current season of my life includes the reality of fragile lives and cancer. As I sat in the room with a friend listening to the Doctor, the words echoed across my life. In short, there were precancerous cells which needed to be removed. Left unchecked, the only certainty was that cancer would, in time, arrive. In this case, the diagnosis was early, and the treatment was successful.
As the conversation with the Doctor lingers, I find myself listening to old words replaying themselves in life. “Lust gets pregnant and has a baby: sin! Sin grows up to adulthood and becomes a real killer.” (James 1.15). Evil and darkness, left unattended, consume everything within reach.
Anyone who has not wrestled with a cancer in any form, for me it was a slow-growing tumor, there are several Life reminders.
It helps to know. As hard as it might be to hear, as difficult as it is to accept, as soul destroying as it can feel at the time, unless one knows, one will not have an opportunity to act. I think about my tumor reveal. There were signs and symptoms which indicated something bad was going on within me. At the first test, a diagnostic technician telegraphed what would soon be confirmed. Yet, it wasn’t until the Doctor gave me the definitive analysis after the second test that everything became real.
If one wants to optimize one’s future, there are considerations to be weighed and decisions to be taken. Decisions require action. Actions will lead to follow-ups. The realization, especially in hindsight, lies in one’s discovery of truth. It is never the end of the story. It was, in my experience, a door to a new set of opportunities.
Left unattended, bad things get even more so. Tumors, even slow or benign, can grow. Darkness, fading hope, and fear, left unattended, will consume the available light.
Becoming a better child of Divinity is the world of a lifetime. Awareness is our opportunity to take a step forward, to make a difference to others as well as ourselves.
