Some of his mysteries

As you know, lately we've been watching our pastor's wife deal with cancer. She's been dealing with it for ten years.

Now, I know that human sickness is a result of the fall, as all evil things are on this planet. So, Bev has a physical manifestation of sin, growing in her body. That is a sobering thing in itself. Bev is also a Christian. That means that the Holy Spirit resides in her - that her body is also a temple for God. I became amazed a while back at the seeming impossibility that God, who cannot tolerate sin, would be willing to reside in our bodies, riddled with sin as they are. How can that be? Can a holy God just shrug and say, "Well, whatever . . . I'll hold my nose and bear it." I don't think so. What would induce Him to live in such a spiritual pig sty? Well, love, yes. He does love us. But beyond that, what would make Him able to justify to Himself the soiling of His holiness by such residing? I think God must have a goal in it - a way of redeeming and compensating for such an offense to His spirit. I look at Bev's body and wonder, "What is God's Spirit doing in that body, with cancer eating away at it?" He can cure the illness, of course. He can also remove the Christian's soul from such a polluted place.

It reminds me of the patience of God in the Old Testament, how He seemingly overlooked the sins of so many, how He also took into heaven some who had sinned. This seemed wrong on His part - how could a holy God overlook their sin? He seemed to have soiled himself with it. But he was vindicated on the cross, when He showed that it was His plan all along to pay for those sins. His holiness was maintained.

And it is his plan in Bev, to show all the universe why He can unite His Spirit with her corruption, why He could unite His Son with a body of corruption in the incarnation -- He has a redeeming plan, even for our bodies.

The fall was a devastating hammer blow to humanity. I often contemplate how God teaches us spiritual truths by giving us physical realities as analogies. The corruption of the body is one -- the human body is attacked from violence without, and from disease within. Isn't it so with our souls as well? Temptations assail us from the outside, hit us broadside. But more insidious and slow are the sins from within, like a cancer eating quietly at the soul. How thankful I am that a healing physician can cut to my heart and heal. How can we think we can conquer sin on our own? That is as ludicrous as Bev determining she will perform surgery tomorrow and remove her cancer.

Okay, now I've cleaned my brain out of those thoughts.