It seems like everywhere I turn, I hear another cancer story. Everyone I know either has cancer, or has a relative or friend suffering from it or had a loved one with it in the past. It is bringing me down. Cancer stinks. It’s times like this that I try to remind myself that God is in control but it is hard. You think, why would God allow someone so young to be taken from this life? Or why was someone with that wonderful attitude swept away from the earth where he or she could continue to do so much good work for the Kingdom? Or for what reason did God see that these children don’t need a mother anymore? Or a father? Or sister, brother, grandfather, grandmother, aunt, uncle, cousin, friend? What have the people left behind done to deserve this?

But I know we are not punished on earth by God for our actions. Illnesses and disabilities are not direct effects of our sins.

When Jesus passed a blind man outside of the temple, His disciples asked Him if it was the man or his parents who sinned and caused him to be born blind… “Jesus answered, ‘It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.’” John 9:3a

You see, the man was blind because God had a plan to use his disability to help bring others to follow Christ. One of the stories of cancer that I recently heard is of a man who was in remission but his cancer came back recently. He contacted his brother and asked him to come and talk about Salvation and the hope we have in Jesus! It is possible that in this situation, God is using the cancer to bring the affected man to come to know Him.

There are a few situations where we can see God at work but there are many more others through which we, as mere humans, cannot see God at all. But we know He is there. We know He has a plan.

God doesn’t give us all the answers because he wants us to wonder. He wants us to want to know more. If we knew everything God did and why he did it, wouldn’t we lose interest? Proverbs 25:2 says “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter; to search out a matter is the glory of kings.” God made us as humans to want to search for reasons.

So while it is frustrating to not know why God does something, or allows something to happen, I am willing to bet that the alternative would be worse. This is where faith comes in. If we have faith that God has a plan and he knows what he is doing, we will be comforted in a way that nobody and nothing else can do.

Thanks for reading!
Mrs. Charlene Maugeri