Last Saturday, we lost a good friend to cancer. The next day, I was scheduled to preach at our church while the pastor was at Annual Conference. It was too late for me to completely rewrite the sermon I had prepared, so all I could do was extemporize a little bit. (Patti, I hope you are enjoying your pie.) Now that I have time, I thought I’d write about the things I didn’t say on Sunday.
This passage from 1 Thessalonians is often used (IMO abused) to support the premillennial dispensationalism that has been popularized in the Left Behind series. I have a lot of problems with that, but my main one is that it overlooks Paul’s main point here. It was written to reassure the Thessalonian Christians who had lost loved ones that their loss was not forever. They would meet again.
Paul, along with the rest of the earliest Christians, expected Jesus to return within their lifetime. He assures those who are grieving that their loved ones won’t miss out on the party that will happen when Jesus returns and the kingdom of God is realized on earth in all its fullness. Note that he doesn’t tell them not to grieve…he tells them not to grieve in the same way that people who don’t believe there will be life beyond death experience grief. Death isn’t a period at the end of the story. It’s beginning the first paragraph of a new, better story.
I don’t remember when I met Patti, but we worked together on a lot of the same service projects through our church. I remember Patti saying she was a “jack of all trades, and a master of many” and that is absolutely true. Anything of a practical nature, from sewing face masks during the pandemic to making sub sandwiches for volunteer workers and sack lunches for the homeless seniors at Justa Center, to organizing people and materials for our semi annual Justa Center barbecues- she could do, and do it better than anyone else I know. If she didn’t know how to do something, she would learn- like using power tools during a church remodeling project. And she was unflappably upbeat and cheerful about everything she did- even when it came down to battling cancer.
For several years, we walked at the mall with Patti three or four times a week, which was something I always looked forward to doing. I think Patti got her diagnosis that she had stage 4 ovarian cancer at about the same time I got my diagnosis of the blood cancer polycythemia vera, and we had many conversations about life, death, and immortality during those walks. Patti’s diagnosis was much more serious than mine, her treatments much harsher, and her prognosis not as hopeful. She was clear-eyed about her future, but she was determined to make each day count as best she could.
In Psalm 90 we read “Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom”. Patti had that heart of wisdom. She knew what was important- time with family and service to others- and she made the most of it. The photo below is of a reusable shopping bag she made for me, knowing that I am a cat lover. She made dozens of similar bags for her chemo nurses and others, selecting materials that she thought would be special to the recipients. Even when she was hospitalized for what turned out to be the endgame, she was busily texting me to make sure that everything for our Justa Center barbecue was covered.
I don’t know why Patti was taken from us prematurely. Like the writer of Ecclesiastes warns us, there is an element of randomness to the universe and who lives and who dies.
The race is not to the swift
or the battle to the strong,
nor does food come to the wise
or wealth to the brilliant
or favor to the learned;
but time and chance happen to them all.
Moreover, no one knows when their hour will come:
As fish are caught in a cruel net,
or birds are taken in a snare,
so people are trapped by evil times
that fall unexpectedly upon them.
I don’t think cancer, or any of the other terrible things that cut life short, are God’s plan for anyone. We live in a broken world where bad stuff happens, and will continue to happen until God makes all things new. The writer of Isaiah foresees a redeemed world when among other things,
“Never again will there be in it
an infant who lives but a few days,
or an old man who does not live out his years;
the one who dies at a hundred
will be thought a mere child;
the one who fails to reach a hundred
will be considered accursed.
We cannot choose the times in which we live, or what happens to us in them. As Gandalf told Frodo, “All we can do is decide what to do with the time we are given” Patti made the most of the time she was given, and like Enoch, Patti walked with God. I believe Patti walked straight into God’s welcoming arms and is experiencing a kind of new life we can only imagine. I like to imagine her as part of that great cloud of witnesses as expressed in this song:
I miss you, Patti. Until we meet again.
joantheexpatriatebaptist 