Sin is a Cancer

Steve Stroope is an amazing pastor. Every time I walk out of church I am bursting with new ideas and thoughts to wrestle with over the week. Yesterday he began a new series called " Community with God". During the sermon he made what seemed like a simple statement but it stayed with me. He was talking about how much God hates sin. He said that God hates sin the way a parent of a child with cancer hates the cancer.

This struck a chord with me because of my sister. My little sister has a life-threatening disease that affects her liver. She was diagnosed in 7th grade and has already had a liver transplant. The transplant is not a cure but really just a kind of mega-patch. The disease is still there. She takes some serious medicine to keep herself well. Before the transplant, the pills were even worse. At her worst, she lived with our parents. Every morning and night my mother would go to her with a handful of pills. These were pills that my mother knew would make her baby girl throw up, tremble, make her bones brittle, make her hair fall out, gain weight and just do awful things to her body. They would also keep her baby girl alive.

The treatment may be terrible but the disease will kill you.

God is the same way when it comes to sin in our lives. I've asked God before why He's putting me through certain trials because they hurt so badly. He's God! He could take this away! Can't he see how this is affecting me?! However, God doesn't just throw those pills at me and say DEAL WITH IT. He wraps His arms around me and tells me that it's for my own good. He cries with me when I hurt. He comforts me and tells me to hang on just a little longer. This is going to be worth it.

I watched my mother tuck quilts around my shivering sister. I watched my mother spoon broth into her mouth when her hands trembled too much to hold a spoon. I watched her sit next to hundreds of hospital beds for endless hours waiting on doctors and tests. I look back now and I can see my mother glorifying and personifying God with her actions.

Now I'm the mother holding my children down while nurses stab them in the legs with viruses. Then I get them up, wipe away their tears and tell them that I do this because I love them. I do this for their own good. Then I pray to God that He keeps giving me my pills and shots. But please keep wiping away my tears, too.