This will not be another lesson from the tent. Today is Thanksgiving and I would like to talk about something I am truly thankful for. At first it will sound very strange that I could be thankful for what I am about to share but please bear with me. What I want to share with you is recently my wife Joan was diagnosed with breast cancer. We do not know the full extent of this disease yet, but we will find out next week. What we have been told is that it is not good. So how can I talk about my wife having breast cancer while at the same time talking about being thankful? It doesn’t seem that those two concepts should ever be thought of together.

Joan and I were married at the age of eighteen and that was fifty-five years ago. That’s fifty-five years of learning about God, learning about each other, learning about love, learning about grace, learning about forgiveness, learning about joy, learning about our human shortcomings, discovering what is truly important, and understanding how to work through the trials and tribulations that everyone has to deal with at times in their life.

This moment in time challenges everything that we have collectively learned together for nothing can happen to either of us without directly affecting the other person just as much. That is married life. And I wouldn’t want it any other way. Joans cancer is my cancer. My struggle is her struggle. We share it all – the good times and the bad times.

So how can I honestly be thankful in the middle of this devastating disease? Let me share with you what cancer means to two people who have spent the past fifty-five years getting to know God and serving Him together.

God made Joan and I uniquely different, so we are not two peas in a pod as they say. We are closer to being the north and south poles on a magnet that sometimes oppose each other, yet at times will be stuck like glue to each other. That is not unusual it is how most married couples are, and I think that is exactly how God designed marriage to be. It is this attraction and polar opposition that makes us stronger, more loving, more creative, more fun, more interesting, and much wiser than we could ever be alone.

Now let’s get to the scariness of this cancer – there is a possibility that I may lose my most cherished possession here on earth and if that happens, I will be alone having lost one-half of me. For that I am not thankful, nor will I ever be. I could lose both my arms and legs, and it would not affect me as much as losing the woman who has truly been with me every moment of these past fifty-five years; both physically and internally because I cannot possess even a thought without her presence somehow being involved in it. We have become one just as God designed marriage to be. And this is what fuels my thanksgiving despite the terrible disease cancer is.

One thing cancer does is it sure makes conversations take a different course. There has been hardly a day during these past couple of months where that ugly “c” word hasn’t been involved in our conversation. And each time it has, Joan and I end up talking about the joys of our life memories. And as we reflect on life and now the possibility of death, we so often find ourselves in a state of thankfulness because life becomes even more precious when death may be lurking around the next corner.

So, what drives our thankfulness during this time of reflection and coping with cancer? It is everything these podcasts have been about. When I started these lessons, we didn’t know that Joan would soon have breast cancer. During all our conversations the one thing that keeps bringing us back to a place of thankfulness is the truth of our relationship with God. You see, without all that the kingdom has brought to our lives and what it means for our future, our outlook on life would be completely different. There certainly would not be any thanksgiving. And most likely there would be anger, frustration, hopelessness and the uncertainty of the future would be flooded with harsh cold moments that turn into days, weeks, months and years of mental anguish.

Instead, the truth behind these podcasts is our reality. They are behind the memories that flood our souls, and they are the future that we depend on. And death is not our reality. Life in the eternal kingdom is. It is there we will relish the eternal relational partnership with God in ways we have never experienced here on earth. The reality of the kingdom means death is only a doorway into the great future that God designed for us when He created this world. And in that future world, our greatest and fondness experiences that we have shared here on earth will not be even close to the smallest moment we have in the world of God’s eternal kingdom. Death only opens the door to the life God prepared for us at the foundation of the world and for that, Joan and I are eternally thankful.

That awful word cancer has brought the reality of all I have taught in these lessons from the tent into the circumstances we are dealing with now and will continue to do so for some time no matter what the outcome is. Cancer will either take Joans life, or it will bring new suffering and challenges for both of us to deal with, but life will not be the same from now on.

And this we can be certain of; the outcome of our life is not determined by this cancer. Our future was determined when Joan and I were rescued from the domain of darkness and transferred into the kingdom of God’s beloved Son, and nothing we experience on earth can alter or take that away from us.

So, I share our dilemma with you all and once again there really is just one thing – our thanksgiving is not determined by our circumstances, it is the result of God’s amazing gift of His kingdom and for that we are thankful even in the middle of struggling with cancer this Thanksgiving day.

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Produced by Dereck Bradley

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