Toxic Bodies, Whole Lives

Help! Someone I Love Has CancerCancer attacks healthy tissue and turns it toxic. Modern medicine attacks these toxic cells with surgery, poisonous medications and lethal radiation. The question becomes whether the human body can survive the treatment. Two years ago the decision was made to attack my cancer with a combination of toxic chemicals and targeted radiation. The plan was to eliminate the toxic cells.before they spread throughout my body.

Your battle with sin is very much like my battle with cancer. Sin attacks what God made to blessings and turns them into something ugly. Sin is far more deadly than cancer. Sin has plagued my body and spirit since my birth. There is no medical cure for sin. The only cure is to take that which was toxic and destructive and make something new and vibrant in its place. Cancer has the capacity to end my life on earth. Even after 2 years there is the possibility that it can return. However, my larger problem, my sin, has been defeated and replaced with life. The corrupt is gone and life connected to Christ exists in its place.

Cancer is scary, it should be. But it is nothing compared to the devastation that sin brings. Don’t be focused on things that only impact your body.

The Pharisees couldn’t figure out why Jesus was hanging out with people they thought were beneath them — the sinners, prostitutes and tax collectors. They began to complain among themselves. Christ heard their grumbling. In one sentence he put the issue squarely on the table:

On hearing this, Jesus said to them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” Mark 2:17

Don’t be foolish and measure life the way the world does. Apart from Christ, no one recovers from sin, there is no medical cure. The toxic plague of sin continues until everything about you has been fatally infected.

Cancer or whatever toxic disease you have will not keep you from God. Sin, on the other hand, will rob you of all that is precious, all that makes life worth living. Sin will leave you disappointed with everyone and everything in your life. Sin knows nothing of hope, only anger and bitter frustration.

Praise God that Jesus came to call sinners and heal them, even those with disease ridden bodies. Christ takes the toxic waste of sin and brings beauty and wholeness in its place. I don’t know if my cancer will return. But I do know that Christ has given me life. That is something I can live with!

Shepherd Press