Look for Blessings in Any Adversity

Life is not just ups and downs like a roller coaster, it is much more mixed and messy. But it is also much richer than the one direction the metaphor of a roller coaster might lead us to think, because even at the bottom, if we do not get too scared we can look out and see the beauty around us.

 

Not to long ago someone compared my life of late to the Book of Job.  More precisely, she said that I could rewrite Job.  I have already written a little to my congregation about how untrue this strikes me.  Mostly because one of the first things that happened to Job was that his family was taken from him.  In some ways I have felt that in all that has happened to me recently, my family has rallied around me and been incredibly supportive.  Any rifts that existed been have been healed.

 

And Job's friends were not much help to him.  My friends and my congregation have been incredible blessings to me through all of this.  Meals and fruit baskets and flowers and cards by the hundreds have arrived at my door.  And I have had many people drive me to all kinds of doctors and to do my shopping.

 

If you don't already know my story, I was diagnosed in May with thyroid cancer  Right before my surgery someone stole my credit cards and cell phone.  The whole time I was seeing doctors about the thyroid, I complained of a pain in my gut that no one took seriously.  Two weeks after my thyroid surgery I was diagnosed with renal cell carcinoma.  The two cancers are totally unrelated.  No one can quite explain it.

 

Maybe I would like to rewrite the book of Job.   Of course I would not actually want to mess with the Scriptures. Job was written to make a particular point.

 

But if I were to rewrite Job, I would have to wonder if Job -- even with all of his troubles -- ever woke up as I did this morning, feeling incredibly blessed.  There is a waterfall that I hear when I wake up, and the sun was shining and the humidity had lifted.  There was a slight breeze.  The joy in this kind of day is almost palpable.  There is something in the air that is almost intoxicating.  I don't need pain pills if I can breathe in this kind of blessedness.  But even on the rainy days, there are flowers in the yard and wonderful people and a richness to the texture of life.

 

The doctors who have treated my two kinds of cancer so far have reason to believe I will recover from both.  But none of us is sure how much time we have.  What we have is time to give thanks for the fact that we were given the chance to experience the richness of God's creation.  And to give thanks for the people that we share this life with. 

 

May the days and the weeks and the years that God gives us be filled with ways to give thanks by the people that need us in this world.

 

I once told people that the way God taught me to tithe was by cutting my income in half.  Somehow I believe that God has used my illnesses to make me really understand what it means to be blessed.  I only pray that I can continue to share what I have learned and to translate all of this sense of being blessed into the way I live my life.  If God can use all my adversity this well, then I might almost give thanks for it -- but more for a Lord that takes even the most horrible things and can use them to bless us.

 

I have written before that all of our lives are to be about thanksgiving.  My head always knew it.  Now I believe it is being written on my heart.  Who can I bless today the way I have been blessed.

 

Lord, may we spend all our days in Thanksgiving and in giving as we have learned from you.  Amen

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Copyright © 2007, The Rev. Dana Reardon. All rights reserved. Used by permission. Email her at mspastor@aol.com.



The Rev. Dana Reardon is pastor at St. Paul Evangelical Lutheran Church, Warwick, RI.  A lifelong Lutheran, she came to ordained ministry after 21 years in nursing, mostly in pediatric intensive care.  She graduated from Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia in 1998 and served 4 ½ years in Upstate New York before becoming a New Englander.  She is still trying to understand the accent.  While in the Upstate New York Synod she chaired the Stewardship Team.  That began her fascination with what makes stewards -- and more, what makes for generosity. She has three amazing daughters: Pastor Reardon says much of what she knows of life she learned from them.