Good morning…
I love the interactive nature of our “sue2you” daily blog. I appreciate people choosing the “Reply here” option at the bottom of each message, privately sharing personal thoughts or offering me kind words of encouragement. Another dynamic facet of this online gift is an invitation into a deeper, wider wisdom. When I wrote about my friend recently diagnosed with cancer (see 2.18.16 post, “Living heaven on earth”), a few subscribers gave me wise recommendations I have passed along to her personally.
“Sue, our Bible study is doing a wonderful book and study by Margaret Feinberg, “Fight Back with Joy.” Your friend might read her book, which chronicles Margaret’s own battle with cancer, to see if Margaret’s words and insights might help her on her journey. Margaret shares a powerful method of using God’s word to find joy in all suffering through prayer.”
“Sue, I would love to share info about the Cancer Wellness Center with your friend. I’m on plane to Nicaragua…back Feb 28….so thereafter? Let’s connect then.”
“Sue, no doubt you’ve got more books to read than time to read them. But, in light of your friend’s recent cancer diagnosis, I want you to know that I just finished When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi, a neurosurgeon who was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer at age 36. He was a gifted writer who gives an unvarnished 200-page account of what it’s like to go from a doctor on top of the world to a patient battling a terminal disease. Ann Patchett says it best: “This is one of a handful of books I consider to be a universal donor – I would recommend it to anyone, everyone.”
The next day, God’s surround sound spoke up through another subscriber: “Hi Sue. I recommend to your friend When Breath Becomes Air, life lessons learned from a young neurosurgeon battling lung cancer. Here is a quote from the book’s introduction: ‘In the end, it cannot be doubted that each of us can see only part of the picture. The doctor sees one, the patient another, the engineer a third, the economist a fourth, the pearl diver a fifth, the alcoholic a sixth, the cable guy a seventh, the sheep farmer an eighth, the Indian beggar a ninth, the pastor a tenth. Human knowledge is never contained in one person. It grows from the relationships we create between each other and the world, and still it is never complete. And Truth comes somewhere above all of them, where, as at the end of that Sunday’s reading, the sower and reaper rejoice together. For here the saying is verified that ‘One sows and another reaps.’ I sent you to reap what you have not worked for; others have done the work, and you are sharing the fruits of their work.'”
Jesus said, “The food that keeps me going is that I do the will of the One who sent me, finishing the work he started, John 4:35 (MSG).
As a community of “sue2you” subscribers, doctors and patients, engineers and beggars, alcoholics and pastors, do we not grow from the relationships we create between each other and the world? Together, daily we sow and we reap, rejoicing over life’s joys and bonding in life’s sorrows, receiving wisdom from the single Source above all human knowledge. May this be the food that keeps each one of us going, “Help me, LORD, to do the will You have designed me uniquely to accomplish. Sharing the fruits of the hard work of others, please give me the courage to help finish the work You started before time began.”
Sue
