My next Chemotherapy cycle is on Monday, 3rd Dec and hopefully the platelet count is high enough for the therapy to proceed.
As usual, I had requested for Communion before the therapy and church had always been very accommodating and kind to provide communion. As Vicar is away on a trip, another pastor was roped in to conduct communion on Thursday, 29th Nov.
The message for the communion was taken from Psalm 100.
Psalm 100
All Men Exhorted to Praise God.
A Psalm for Thanksgiving.
(NASB)
1 Shout joyfully to the Lord, all the earth.
2 Serve the Lord with gladness;
Come before Him with joyful singing.
3 Know that the Lord Himself is God;
It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves;
We are His people and the sheep of His pasture.
4 Enter His gates with thanksgiving
And His courts with praise.
Give thanks to Him, bless His name.
5 For the Lord is good;
His lovingkindness is everlasting
And His faithfulness to all generations.
In my previous blog entry, I had mentioned that I kind of feel bad that I had not dwell on the relationship with God as much as I should. Before the communion, after pastor had shared the message, I had shared most of my blogs had mainly focus on then horizontal relationship and lesser on the vertical. I may have wrote a lot on the nature if God, of his sovereignty but not really on relationship with Him.
Psalm 100 then bring home the message on the goodness of God, that we praise and thank Him because His goodness. I had blogged about this before but what has giving Him praise and thanks relates to having a relationship with Him?
As usual… sigh… did not remember everything that was mentioned during pastor’s sharing but for this Psalm, there are 2 verses that are significant for me.
In Verse 3, it is written “Know that the Lord Himself is God; It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves; We are His people and the sheep of His pasture”. In this verse, it already implies a relationship with God for we are His creation and we are His people and His sheep. Although the verse may be seen from a relational standpoint of a higher being (God) with a lower beings (us) but we must also look in context of the entire Bible where God (Christ) became man and is thus part of “us”. We can thus approach the relationship not just from the perspective of God with man but God as a man with man.
How do we relate to Him then? From my perspective, it is in verse 5, “For the Lord is good; His lovingkindness is everlasting and His faithfulness to all generations”. It is one where God is steadfast and implied because it is written “…His lovingkindness is everlasting and His faithfulness to all generations…”.
I was communicating with a colleague who is getting married next year and she mentioned about my blog on the marriage vows. This verse then, reminds me of how I think our relationship with God is like or to be like, the Bridegroom and the bride. The only difference is that God is “everlasting” and “to all generations” whereas (if I can be bold to say this) for most people, relationship is only “good” only when it is convenient.
Tomorrow, if my platelet level is “high”, it will be my 7th chemotherapy cycle.
Over the last 2 weeks, there wasn’t much going on that I would say is very significant but if there is one thing that got repeated on several occasion was my “joy” at been able undergo my chemotherapy. Josie shared about it, that initially she also don’t quite understand my joy and one of the church staff at the communion mentioned that from reading my blog, she got to understand where I am coming from.
Basically, it is this: as vicar had shared in one of the pre-therapy communion, more often than not, healing is a process and so in my case, it is a process. God had not chosen to heal me “miraculously” and until such time as God does, I believe that He is bringing me through a process, not just in terms of treatment for my cancer but a process of transforming my life. Therefore, if I am not able undergo chemotherapy, there is no hope. As long as I can still go through the therapy, there is hope, hope for myself and hope in God.
God has given me this opportunity to continue to hope, to allow Him to continue to work, to allow all around me to see that the Lord is good, His lovingkindness is everlasting and His faithfulness to all generations.
Have to continue to pray for me though, I think this time I am really having a mild flu as my nose is running for the last 3 days. No fever and no throat infection and other regular flu stuff and these are good news but all depends on the doctor tomorrow and the blood test, on whether the therapy can proceed.
On behalf of Josie and Nathan and for myself, I say In God We Trust.
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