dilemna

Someone very close to me is having to make some life-altering, dream-shattering decisions right now.  Their infant son was barely a month old when he was diagnosed with Spinal Muscular Atrophy, and since has been in and out of the hospital with respiratory complications.  Now he lays in the pediatric I.C.U. with tubes in his little body and machines whirring and beeping to keep him alive.  Soon, his parents may have to make that gut-wrenching decision.  It is a scene straight out of a Hallmark made-for-TV movie, except the pain is unfathomably real and unfolding right before all of us who know and love this family.

How does a person, a daddy, a momma make that kind of decision?  They just built a small addition to their home with a nursery, had finished decorating only a few months ago, setting up furniture, with all the hopes and dreams parents have bringing a child into the world.  And now, prayers are going up for them all, night and day, "Oh, God, heal this child, undergird his family, show Your glory in this situation."

When the doctor came to tell the Dad of the decisions that may soon have to be made, he was shaking and tearful, visibly sequestered by his knowledge of the situation.  He asked the Dad how it was he could remain so calm and serene under this level of durress.  I know the answer to the doctor's quesion, but it is still soooo amazing to witness.  It is that much celebrated amazing grace.  As numb and dog-tired as he is, this Dad knows about faith in God; that no matter the outcome of this scenario, the enemy of human kind will lose, and God's glory will be radiated, newly revealed to him and others watching. 

Faith works best when things do not go as we planned.  The Mother's faith is being, and will be sorely tested in the days and months to come.  Inevitably, that die-hard question will knock persistantly at the door of her thoughts.  When she opens, there it will be starring her in the face:  "Why?"  For all of us with the hope of eternal life through faith in Christ, this sliver of time will be visited and revisited over and again for the rest of our days; and this is always the dilemna:  do we fight the inevitable because of that hope and endure the sufferring of it, or do we give in, averting the agony of the fight, and just rest our hopes and dreams solidly in the nail scarred hands of the One who brought them to life in us?  Either way, there is sufferring.  But sufferring is precious; a purifying, developing expressway to becoming what the Creator intends us to be: perfected.  And as the Apostle Paul wrote in Romans 8.18, we must consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. 

There is more than enough for us to be concerned with on this side of it all, the issues that surround life and death, joy and sufferring, eternal life and God's purpose in us.  I get caught up in the bio-ethical debate raging in my mind over this situation.  But my mind keeps coming back to ponder another line of Paul's God-inspired writing:  to be present on earth is to live for Christ with you, and to die would be to dwell in Christ's presence.  Ah, brothers and sisters, now there is the true dilemna.