Familiar place, unfamiliar illness

It's the last week in December and the pleasant, familiar end of year routine is under way. I am staying with friends in the south Midlands. These kind people started out as church members in one of my churches in the Banbury area and eventually became my adopted family.

When my mother died in 1997 they let me use the flat attached to their farmhouse. This then became home from home and I have had many happy stays there, particularly each year once Christmas duties were over in whatever church I was pastoring at the time. The family members have their pleasant Christmas traditions and have willingly included me in these.

So all is agreeably familiar, even down to the annual Christmas cold. More often than not I go down with one germ or another not long before Christmas Day. It makes me sound chesty and bunged up but doesn't quite manage to spoil the festivities.

However this year there is a new twist. I have been identified as having a number of medical problems, particularly bladder and prostate. These have taken me into unfamiliar territory. Though never very robust, I have not been used to beating a path to surgeries, clinics and hospital departments. Usually when there I meet with compassion, helpfulness and efficiency. But this does not change the fact that I am on an unknown and disturbing journey.

The new year will bring more investigations and preparations and, sooner or later, surgery. I am prepared to leave the outcome with God and, under Him, the medical people. They are His instruments, whether they acknowledge Him or not. Some friends wonder that I don't ask more questions. But knowing all the details is not the same as being cured. In any case, physical cure only postpones the far more important issue of what happens to me in eternity. As long as I know Christ and the forgiveness of sins and the power of His resurrection, that is the main question answered and friendly light on future paths.

"Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil,
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff,
they comfort me.
You prepare a table before me
in the presence of my enemies;
you anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever" (Psalm 23:4-6 ESV).