October 12, 2012
Available Treatment
Information in a recent obituary described a man who was diagnosed with
prostate cancer in 2006 and “He devoted
his next six years to the pursuit of sunshine and laughter while being
surrounded by a circle of family and friends who loved him enormously.” The
life expectancy for untreated prostate cancer is about 10 years, so I assume
the recently deceased gentleman chose to pursue sunshine and laughter rather
than treatment. Although I’m surprised, I really shouldn’t be. I’m wondering if
the Lord had given us a spiritual life expectancy how many people would still
reject available treatment. For the wages
of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ
Jesus our Lord. (Rom 6:23 NIV)
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Gail;
-----I was talking with a client yesterday who has been undergoing treatment for lymphoma. I gasped when he told me that he was prescribed twelve radiation treatments at the price of twenty thousand dollars each. The chair he sits in while receiving these treatments, quite typically, is not included in that price. So he pays six hundred dollars per hour to “rent” it. Your run of the mill doctor out there rakes a million dollars into his pockets after taxes every five years. Look in your Yellow Pages. The Dex phone book carries six pages containing an average of about thirty listings each for the Montrose, Grand Junction and surrounding area.
-----I like this gentleman’s attitude. I talk to Char occasionally about apparently terminal illness and my desire to not reline any doctor’s indoor swimming pool or pay off his BMW and build a garage for it to boot just to gain a few more years of existence in what can hardly be called a life. I spend a lot of time pondering the nature of love and truth and an eternal condition where everything is patterned perfectly by those two basic principles. Why would I even want to stick around here? Even if I weren’t old and I were facing terminal prospects, then Glory Hallelujah! My struggles would be near their end.
-----I understand that is a bit selfish. People love me. I have no explanation for this. But they do. A few would even miss me. My debt of love owes them the little joys and encouraging words that being around each other can produce. And for four particular folks, my hands currently provide a living. So I understand the selfishness of longing to leave. It’s like wanting to throw all my junk in the back of an old truck and driving off to the tip of South America, or just mailing myself to Australia. It just wouldn’t be nice to do.
-----So, like the gentleman of the obituary, I pursue some sunshine and laughter with anyone nearby. But more than that, I pursue meaning in hard work and the joys the fruit of such can cause those to whomever I distribute it. Yet most of all, I pursue a sense of the Word of God in a world tragically torn by self serving ambitions, dim-witted thinking, and plain old good-hearted carelessness (most of which effects me is my own.) After I stick my heels in the air and set up at room temperature, it’s ok if my obit casts an apology to all good doctors for the lack of my contributions towards their swimming pools. It’s even ok if it mentions my tolerance for sunshine and laughter. But what I want it to read mostly about is my then having found with eyes and ears and touch and taste and smell the Lord God in His place where only my imagination could go before. There is the sunshine and laughter I seek. And of being there too is the aspect about others which gives me joy in them now. This medicine is free.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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